


The Vampire Diaries: Flesh and Blood - Claire De Lune

by immortalkaos80



Series: The Vampire Diaries: Flesh and Blood [1]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Horror, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Content, Romance, Vampires, mild nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 240,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3184346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immortalkaos80/pseuds/immortalkaos80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Already fretting the arrival of the mysterious Klaus, Stefan, Damon and Elena have more than enough to deal with. The powers that be aren't content to stop there however. When a series of blatant vampire killings sweeps through Mystic Falls, Damon's past comes back to bite him and everyone else he knows. But is it random chance or is there something more sinister and far more organized behind it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place between Season 2's "Save The Last Dance' Teaser scene and the first act. April,10-25th 2010.

Damon Salvatore poured himself a double measure of bourbon and eyed his younger brother from across the room. Stefan was ensconced in the corner of one of the matching red upholstered couches that formed the sitting area in front of the huge fireplace that was the living room of the Salvatore Boarding House. The rest was rounded out by a couple of matching wingback chairs that were as old as he and Damon were. The fireplace sported a warm and toasty fire. Beside Stefan sat Elena Gilbert with her long dark brown hair and thickly fringed eyes that tilted just enough to lend her an exotic look that made men gawk at her. Damon was no exception and neither was Stefan.

Of course, Stefan was allowed. She was his girlfriend. Damon, well Damon got to play nice and pretend he didn’t love her the same as his little brother did. Elena bit her lip in worry and Stefan passed her a crystal tumbler freshly filled with a small amount of bourbon from the cache on the table behind the couch. Damon, ever his self-denying and cocky self, strolled over and plucked the glass from her hand as soon as she had a hold on it.

“Nu uh, you’re a minor,” Damon teased, pouring her glass’s contents in with his. Elena leveled a perturbed glare at him.

“Damon,” Stefan began to chastise. Damon threw a smug ice blue glance at him, handing Elena the doubled portion of bourbon.

“If you are going to drink. Drink,” Damon said. Elena took the glass back and rolled her eyes at him.

“It’s supposed to be enough to calm her nerves not get her soused,” Stefan remarked. Damon shrugged languidly and sauntered back to the bourbon decanter, pouring himself yet another refill, since he’d thrown his in with Elena’s.

“Contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Whatever will the sheriff think of me?” he mocked and gave an over exasperated gasp. Stefan shook his head at him.

“This is serious Damon.”

Damon took a swig of his refreshed drink and stared hard at his brother, the smug humor gone from his eyes in a flash. “I know that. Believe me.” Then the coldness of his stare warmed “But let’s be real. We have no idea where Klaus is. Elena is as safe as we can get her at the moment and until Klaus decides to show his mysterious self… we got nothin’. Unless you’re hiding a Hybrid-Wanna-Be-GPS in that dashing ensemble of yours all we can do is wait. So, I say we wait in style.”

Damon was speaking of their current predicament. Not that there wasn’t a long and storied list of predicaments that they seemed to land right in the middle of but this one might beat them all.  Klaus, one of the Originals, the first vampires in existence and who just so happened to be half werewolf to boot, was desperate to unleash his magically suppressed werewolf nature so he could make himself an army of hybrids and take over the world. 

Only problem was one of the things he needed to do that was Elena, because the spell that had bound his werewolf half used the blood of the Petrova doppelganger and only the blood of the doppelganger could undo it. Elena, lucky girl that she was, just so happened to be the Petrova doppelganger as Katherine, Damon and Stefan’s sire, had been before her. So Klaus was rapidly on his way to capture her. An issue the Salvatore brothers were desperately trying to prevent. But their plans had come to a standstill until Klaus decided to make his presence known. So far, he hadn’t. But he would. It was just a matter of time.

“And ‘waiting in style’ includes getting drunk?” Stefan remarked. Damon walked over to the couch and flopped down beside Elena, his glass never so much as wobbling or spilling a drop of his bourbon.

“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” he said in retort.

“It’s five o’clock here,” Elena pointed out, looking at the antique clock nearby. Damon craned his head and looked at it as if surprised.

“So it is. There we go. Cheers,” he said and clinked his glass against Elena’s untouched one waggling his eyebrows exaggeratedly before he tossed back a large mouthful of bourbon. Stefan and Elena stared at him with long suffering expressions.

“Oh come on. We can’t do anything else. Elena can’t go ‘home’ right now and I refuse to sit and mope myself sick until Klaus shows up. Can’t we just loosen up a little? It’s getting positively broody in here,” Damon complained.

Stefan sighed.

“Damon. I appreciate what you’re trying to do but…”

“No. He’s got a point Stefan. No reason to sit here in self-pity right? So you know what,” Elena said cutting Stefan’s ‘why this is a bad idea’ speech off before it had begun. She tapped her glass against Damon’s. “Cheers.” She took a sip grimacing at the strength of the alcohol. Something she wasn’t used to drinking. Damon took another drink as well raising his glass a little at his brother and grinning triumphantly.

Stefan arched a brow at him in reproach but let it go, raising his own briefly and sipping.

 **Slap, shuffle.** It was a sound so quiet and faint it was almost imperceptible even to a vampire’s ears.

Damon became instantly still, glass frozen midway to his lips, eyes darting back and forth across the room questingly.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Elena asked, looking around as well. Stefan said nothing, he was busy looking for the source of the sound, one hand braced on the arm to bolt to his feet at a moment’s notice.

 **Thud.** It was the sound of something heavy being dropped and it was coming from just outside the front door.

“Now that I heard,” Elena said, shoulders tensing, moving to run if the need arose.

 **Slap. Shuffle**. The sound of feet on cement.

Damon and Stefan both were up and moving in a blur of vampiric speed through the foyer before the sound could even fade.

“Elena stay back,” Stefan ordered, fearing that the suspicious sounds might be a trick meant to lure them outside where they could be attacked. Perhaps Klaus had decided to make an appearance after all.

Damon jerked the front door open and Stefan caught a glimpse of motion blur that could only be another vampire running from their door step. But as he made to follow, he nearly tripped over a large lump on said door step. It was wooly, gray and vaguely person shaped. It wasn’t moving.

“I’ll try to catch them,” Stefan said and without waiting for his brother’s response Stefan was out the door over the immobile lump and after the trespassing vampire. He was out of sight in the blink of an eye.

“What is it?” Elena asked peaking around the corner of the foyer hesitantly, her long dark hair falling in a silky cascade like a curtain. Damon looked at the grey wool covered lump, perplexed.

“A body,” he stated, because that was the only thing it could be. It was obviously a person, dropped unceremoniously on the concrete in a bundle, covered completely with the thin wool blankets emergency personnel often handed out at disaster scenes. But the tell tale scent of blood was absent and a body, living or dead, smelled of blood one way or another to a vampire. It did however smell strongly of vervain.

“Whose?” Elena prodded, worriedly. Damon knew she was concerned it was one of their friends, someone she cared about killed as an opening statement by Klaus.

Damon drew in a deep breath and stepped outside the door, leaving it open and kneeling beside the gray form. He looked it over with more scrutiny, even sniffing surreptitiously for any scent of blood but still there was none. _How odd_ , he thought, his brows pulling together in consternation. Cautiously he moved his hand toward the edge of the blanket so he could pull it back, wary that it was a trick of some sort.

Elena crept a few paces closer, a hand to her breast in fearful anticipation, watching.

Carefully, Damon grasped the edge of the blanket and lifted it with a quick snap of his wrist. Instantly his eyes went very round and his jaw dropped in recognition. In the same instant the ‘body’ started making a strange sound that was reminiscent of air blown through a dusty frail reed as the ‘body’ started to burn and smoke in the rays of sunlight scattered over the doorstep exposed as it was to daylight.

“Oh my God, Claire,” he muttered. Damon, mind boggled, quickly flicked the blanket back over the ‘body’ and slid his arms under it, lifting it gently as if it might break if he moved too fast.

“What? Who?” Elena asked confused coming the rest of the way forward, but she couldn’t see what Damon had, the ‘body’ was covered by the blanket again.

“Invite her in,” Damon demanded.

“What?” Elena sputtered still confused and no little concerned by the wide-eyed look of horror on Damon’s face. Damon never looked horrified. He was the one who _did_ the horrifying.

“Vampire, Elena. You own the house now remember? I can’t bring her in until you invite her,” Damon insisted hurriedly.  Elena looked from Damon to the wool-covered body in his arms.

“But… what if it’s a trick? What if…,” Elena reasoned logically. It could be a trick, it could be someone intended to gain access to the house to capture her for Klaus.  Damon gave her a very angry and at the same time very panicked look.

“It’s not. Not her. Trust me.”

“But…”

“Now, Elena,” Damon growled sharply.

“O-okay, whoever it is can come in,” Elena babbled. Damon was through the door and out of the foyer so fast all Elena felt was the breeze of his passing.  Elena slammed the door shut and ran after him.

He had stopped in the living room and was dropping slowly and with great care to his knees, laying his burden down with all the care of someone handling a Faberge egg. Without looking up he said, “Get me blood bags from the freezer.”

But Elena was frozen in place her hand going to her mouth in shocked horror. “Oh my God,” Elena breathed. Damon had delicately laid back the blanket.

It revealed the body of a woman who was pretty far desiccated. The skin had gone mummy gray and sunken into the hollows of the bones like a shrink wrapped package. Her straw like hair might have been black or brown once. The woman’s wrists had been slit length wise, metal clips shoved into the gaps to keep the wounds from closing. She had been forcibly drained of all her blood. But what was worse was the myriad of wooden skewers, the type used for shish kabobs, driven into her through the pair of tattered jeans and the burgundy wrap around sweater she was wearing.

They were everywhere and they were driven in deeply. Her body looked like a miniature forest of them had sprouted from her desiccated flesh, crammed so close together that you couldn’t have placed more than a finger between them. The only places free of them were her face, what little of it was not burned from Damon accidently exposing the vampire to sunlight, and the section of her chest where her heart was. Even a shish kabob skewer through the heart would kill a vampire, it was still wood.

“Elena, now,” Damon demanded, shaking her from her horrified stare. Elena blinked as if she didn’t understand what he had said.

“Right,” she said suddenly coming back to herself and bolted for the cellar and the large freezer Damon kept his stash of blood bags in. She saw Damon out of the corner of her eye move to a sitting position by the woman’s head, tucking one leg under him and the other out straight. Then he gently moved her head into his lap. The strange dusty hollow reed sound came from her again and Elena realized it was screaming. The woman was screaming in pain but she was dehydrated to the point that the strange soft noise was all the sound the scream produced.

Elena swallowed hard in sympathy and renewed horror, hastening down the stairs out of sight.

She came pelting back up them arms loaded with at least six bags of blood pilfered from the local hospital and ran to Damon’s side. Damon was carefully pulling out the skewers embedded in the woman’s throat, leaving tiny holes in their wake. He had already removed the metal clips from her wrists discarding them on the floor. A line of concentration had developed between his brows, his mouth set and thin but Elena didn’t fail to notice the way he was gazing down at the dried out husk propped on his lap. She didn’t fail to notice it because Damon, Mr. I-am-a-vampire-hear-me-roar-I-have-no-feelings was looking at the woman with something that, if Elena wasn’t mistaken, was pained tenderness.

The moment Elena reached him the woman made that horrible reedy sound again. Elena shivered. It made her stomach knot. “Sh. It’s okay, Claire. I’ve got you,” Damon said softly and Elena had to blink and think about what she had just heard. _Careful Damon_ , Elena thought. _Your humanity is showing._

Blindly, Damon reached up and Elena pushed a blood bag into his hand then bent placing the others next to his leg within easy reach. Damon popped off the cap on one of the tubes to the bag and wrinkled his nose.

“She’s been ‘vervained’,” he muttered caustically, “A lot. I can smell it.”  His ice blue eyes flashed with fury. Whoever ‘Claire’ was, what had been done to her had made Damon angry and Elena knew what Damon angry usually resulted in. Someone dead in retribution.

“If I didn’t know better I’d swear whoever did this _replaced_ her blood with vervain,” Damon bit, taking a sip of blood from the blood bag to get it primed and then gently worked the index finger of his other hand between the woman’s lips parting them. Her body had shut so far down she couldn’t even open her mouth on her own.

“Oh God,” Elena gasped softly. She understood the grotesque implication.

Bad enough the woman had been drained and desiccated to the point of mummification—a condition that result in the veins of the afflicted vampire’s body rubbing together, burning with unbelievable pain and causing their body to shut down—but she was filled with vervain. Vervain was an herb that was poisonous to vampires and weakened them substantially, especially in high doses. That alone could have caused her body to start to shut down, then to add insult to injury she was poked full of wooden shish kabob skewers, she was ravenous for blood and despite being incapable of moving at all…she was completely conscious.

Damon slid the tube into the small gap he made with his index finger and then began to squeeze tiny amounts into the woman’s mouth. “There we go. Some nice AB positive will fix you right up. Sorry it’s not 98.6 but beggars can’t be choosers can they?” he said to the woman conversationally as he worked, pausing to let it trickle down her throat after every squeeze. As paralyzed as the woman was there was no way she could swallow of her own volition yet.

“Who did you piss off?” Damon muttered to the woman, shaking his head. Then he snickered. The sound was totally out of place. “We’ve got a veritable ‘Supernatural Days of Our Lives’ going on and you show up. You always did have the worst timing, Claire.”

Elena tilted her head a little, as he said it. It sounded as if he had forgotten Elena was even here and was reminiscing wistfully about some inside joke that Elena had no reference point for. Suddenly he seemed to remember himself and his expression changed from mildly wistful and darkly amused to cocky and indifferent in the blink of an eye. _There he goes again_ , Elena thought. _Pretending like he doesn’t care about anything. I wonder who this ‘Claire’ is to him? Whoever she is, he seems to know her, almost sounds like he was friends with her. Imagine that, Damon having a friend._

“Well are you going to help or stand there like a bump on a log?” Damon snipped. Elena blinked at him and started to snap back but he didn’t give her the chance. “Start pulling the skewers out.”

Elena did as she was bid sinking to her knees by the woman’s legs and reaching for a skewer her hand quavering over it. She knew how badly pulling these out must hurt, she didn’t want to cause Claire any more pain. The woman gave that nearly soundless scream again. Damon gave the blood bag another squeeze and looked at Elena expectantly. “Just do it. They have to come out either way. Don’t get squeamish on me now.”

“But it hurts doesn’t it?” Elena said. Damon canted his head a bit in acknowledgment.

“Yeah. But being filled full of little wooden stakes hurts a lot more. Beside either you do it now and listen to her sounding like an empty windbag or you wait until the blood plumps her up and deal with the blood curdling variety. Your choice.”

Elena gave him a hesitant look and Damon lifted his brows and motioned with his head at the skewers. Elena gritted her teeth and grabbed one, pulling it slowly out. The woman made a weird breathy gurgle. Elena winced but kept going. Already the woman’s dry grey skin had started to rehydrate, looking slightly less desiccated. Damon squeezed a little more blood from the bag into her mouth. Elena tried to block out the disturbingly wrong sound of a dessicated vampire’s screams and methodically pulled skewers from the woman’s legs.

The door opened and shut behind them, Stefan’s boots thudding softly on the floor as he returned. “Couldn’t catch them, they were too fast. I couldn’t even get a look at them,” he said perturbed as he came through the foyer.

“That’s what you get for snacking on bunny rabbits,” Damon teased cruelly. It had always been a point of contention between him and his brother that Stefan subsisted on animals rather than human blood, refusing to even drink donated blood. Damon thought it disgusting and debased. Stefan however thought he was taking the moral high ground. But Damon was right, because of Stefan’s choice of diet his abilities were less than a vampire who fed on human blood.

Stefan chose to ignore his brother’s jab and came close enough to get a look at what they were doing saying at the same time, “So who was the body they dumped?” He stopped and blinked at what he saw.

“Whoa. Somebody was angry at her,” he remarked flatly. He knelt on the other side of the woman’s body, putting himself between Damon, who was still busy administering blood, and Elena who was still working on prying loose all the skewers in the woman’s lower body.

“And creative,” Damon noted as Stefan began to help pull skewers loose. It was no accident that he was attending to the woman’s upper half. If she came around enough to move with Elena in her eye line, the vampire, starved as she was, might be unable to control her blood lust and grab Elena. Warm from the vein blood trumps a blood bag every time.

“I’m guessing you know her?” Stefan asked as he worked. A pile of skewers was growing beside them like a box of spilled, over sized toothpicks.

“Yep, I know her. Her name’s Claire Dominic,” Damon stated blandly.

“And?” Stefan pushed.

“Old drinking buddy,” Damon offered and gave his brother a slightly smug glance as he traded the empty blood bag for a new one, uncapping it with an audible pop.  Stefan gave him a knowing look. Everyone here knew what type of drinking Damon was referring too.  As if to accentuate the point, Damon took a sip from the bag to prime it.

“You want to elaborate?” Stefan prodded again. They had nearly gotten all the skewers out and the woman’s screams had started to become wetter, more a mewling than wind through a dusty reed. Her skin no longer looked like a mummy’s so much as a old corpse’s, the hollows slowly filling out and the holes left by the slits in her wrists and the skewers slowly beginning to close.

“Not really, no,” Damon said, sliding the new tube into Claire’s mouth.

“Damon, we have enough problems on our hands. What if this is some sort of trap Klaus has set up?” Elena said with a hint of ire.

Why Damon did this was beyond her. He would show this bright flash of compassion and humanity and then just as quickly he’d shut down again refusing to let anyone or anything through the wall he built around himself. However, in the time she had known him Elena had learned to read Damon. Anytime he shut down and refused to talk, chances were he was hiding something. Usually something he didn’t want anyone to know because it exposed his vulnerable humanity or because he was hurt, made him look a little too human for his taste.

Damon squeezed the fresh blood bag, allowing more than before to escape through the tube into the vampire’s mouth before pausing. He rolled his eyes at Elena.

“It’s not a trap set by Klaus. If it were aimed at you or Stefan, yeah sure. But this was aimed right at me.  It’s not Klaus.”

“Then who dumped a ‘vervained’, blood drained, wooden skewer perforated, desiccated vampire, you just so happen to know on our door step?” Stefan demanded pulling the last skewer out of the woman’s hand and tossing it onto the pile.

“Don’t know,” Damon replied nonplussed by his brother’s evident rising anger.

The woman’s throat convulsed a little, swallowing. She’d come around soon. Maybe she would be more forth coming than Damon.  Her skin had begun to turn colors, a pinkish tint ebbing through the gray. Her hair had begun to soften and become darker. When she was back to normal Elena suspected it would be black as a raven’s wing.

Suddenly Claire’s eyes popped open, the now familiar sight of a vampire’s eyes in full ‘vamp out’ staring back at them. The whites were blood red; the irises a dark mahogany brown as opposed to Elena’s rich amber. The veins around the woman’s eyes darkened and spidered out. She snapped her mouth open revealing a set of very sharp fangs at the same time that her hands moved with blinding speed to snatch the blood bag from Damon’s hands, bringing the entire thing to her mouth. She sank her fangs into it and sucked greedily.

Damon let go quickly getting his hands clear before she could bite him by mistake. “Whoa, hungry girl.” He grinned down at her. “Instant vampire, just add blood. You always were a glutton, little songbird,” he teased. It was meant to sound derisive but Elena caught a note of something else in it but she wasn’t sure what.

Stefan gathered the skewers and rose to his feet, going to the fireplace to toss them into the flames. Able to feed herself the woman’s recovery was going far more rapidly, she finished off the half a bag that Damon had been hand feeding her and dropped it, blood staining her mouth and fingers.

“Damon,” she breathed. Her skin had filled out but she was still deathly pale, a layer of moisture covering her, making her look feverish. She was still far from recovered, though all the holes had healed and her hair had darkened just as Elena thought it would to a lovely black.

“That’s the name, don’t wear it out,” Damon said and handed her another blood bag that she wasted no time sinking her teeth into and any conversation was cut off by the wet sound of Claire draining the blood from it as quickly as she could. Stefan came back and half knelt beside them.

“Who did this to you?” he asked, pulling a handkerchief from his jean pocket and handing it to Damon.

Claire pulled her fangs from the bag, gasping with her fervor to drink as much as she could get her hands on. To anyone else the sight would have made their skin crawl, made them run in terror but Elena only saw some poor woman who had been tortured. Though if she were friends with Damon, she might not be as worthy of sympathy as Elena felt.

Claire didn’t answer Stefan, instead she looked up at Damon. His lips quirked slightly as he used the handkerchief to wipe away the blood staining her lips. Elena arched a brow at him that he didn’t notice.

“Alexander,” she rasped. Damon’s eyes flashed with fury and something that bordered on disbelief.

“That’s impossible.”

Claire swallowed and fear answered Damon’s fury. “It’s not.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Damon muttered. That spurred something in Damon.  “Alright, that’s it,” he said getting up quickly and scooping Claire into his arms. She lolled in them, her head resting against his shoulder as her arms weakly went to encircle his neck. He snagged a couple of the remaining blood bags up and made for the stairs to the next floor without a word.

“Who’s Alexander?” Stefan demanded to know on Damon’s heels. Elena was right behind him.

“No one,” Damon insisted mounting the stairs without slowing. He was headed down the hall toward his bedroom.

“Damon…,” Stefan growled. But Damon pushed through his bedroom door with his back and into the room. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Damon said turning with Claire in his arms to look stone faced at his brother. Elena caught up to them, skittering to a halt behind Stefan. Damon’s jaw was tight and his eyes piercing.

“Damon,” Elena started to plead for an answer. But he wasn’t hearing it.

“Goodbye Stefan and Elena,” he said curtly and slammed the door in Stefan’s face even as Stefan tried to step forward and prevent it. The unmistakable sound of the lock being turned could be heard. Stefan threw up his hands in annoyed exasperation.

“What was that?” Elena asked looking to Stefan.

“I have no idea,” Stefan admitted, his green eyes darkening with anger.

 

***

Damon moved for his bed and managed to shove back the sheets. He could still hear Elena breathing outside the door. Doubtless Stefan was still out there lurking too. Damon gently laid Claire in the bed, pulled off her ankle boots, tossing them on the floor, and tucked the covers over her. She trembled with weakness still. He suspected his sheets were going to end up soaked through with sweat before too long and not the good kind. He dropped the blood bags on his nightstand.

“Well, you look like Hell,” Damon said flippantly, carefully dodging the subject of the aforementioned Alexander until his brother and Elena lost interest and retreated down stairs. He fetched a couple of glasses from his personal stash of drink ware that went with his equally personal stash of alcohol and a tall bottle.

Claire managed to chuckle weakly but the weak laugh turned into a coughing fit. Once she had control of herself, she managed to favor him with a sardonic smirk. The red had receded from her eyes and now the dark mahogany of them stood out like rich stained wood. She looked human now, sickly but human, her dark hair lying in a sweaty tangle on the pillow. “I admit this is one of my less stellar fashion statements.” Her voice was raspy and strained.

Damon narrowed his eyes in thought, looking off in the middle distance in feigned consideration. “I don’t know,” he mused. “Tattered and ripped undead jerky. Might start a trend. I mean, have you seen Justin Beiber?”

Claire laughed at his joke and went into another coughing spasm. “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts.”

“Vervain will do that to you,” Damon stated, setting the glasses on the nightstand and filling one with Wild Turkey bourbon, the other with blood from the blood bag.  “Let’s try this in a more civilized manner shall we?”

He held out the one with blood in it to Claire, who tried to push herself up into a sitting position to take it uselessly. Damon arched a brow at her and waited giving her a chance to do it herself and knowing there was no way.

“I’d take it easy if I were you. You’re full of enough vervain to drop four vampires.”

Claire ignored the suggestion and kept trying. Finally when it was obvious she had no intention of giving up, he snorted and set the glasses back down, sitting on the bed beside her and gripping her firmly around the waist.

“You are pathetic,” he muttered and lifted her up without even trying. He propped her up and arranged the pillows so she would be comfortable before pressing the glass of blood into her hand. She took it and drank, the glass shaking.

“Compassionate as ever I see,” Claire muttered, but there was amusement in her eyes. “You always were a smug bastard.”

“Part of my charm. You know you love it,” Damon retorted. “And if you get blood on my Egyptian cotton sheets I am not going to be a happy man.”

Claire snorted.

“Now drink up. If you’re a good girl and finish all your dinner, there’s dessert,” Damon said. He picked up the bottle of Wild Turkey and wiggled it briefly then set it down again. He had his ear turned ever toward the door waiting on Stefan and Elena to leave. He could still hear them faintly. Standing there, waiting… eavesdropping. Which was why he was keeping his conversation with Claire light and inconsequential. He didn’t want them to overhear.

“You remembered,” Claire said, looking at the bottle with a nostalgic expression.

“You’re favorite drink? Or second favorite anyway. Of course I did. Not likely to forget it. We certainly drank enough of it,” he said.

Claire smiled at him then and it was soft and vulnerable, her brows pinched briefly and then relaxed. Damon gave her a shrewd look, his eyes traveling over her and then he realized he was in danger of going on a nostalgia binge himself and looked away. 

“Thought we’d leave the cuvee until you were a little less petrified and little more… vampy,” he said with his usual sarcastic humor and he let his eyes travel over her again, making the double entendre of ‘vampy’ very clear. He gave her his patented flirtatious smirk. She shook her head softly and gave him a wry smile in return for it, just as he had known she would.

 “Drink,” he insisted, waving at the glass. “Blood heals.” He watched her until she complied. Then he glanced at the door. He could still hear Stefan and Elena standing there, heartbeats gently pattering, the inhalation and exhalation of their breath. They just wouldn’t give up. Contrary to popular belief while a vampire was technically dead, their hearts still beat, they still breathed, as long as they had a diet of blood. Didn’t do much good to be a predator who hunted humans for prey if lack of breathing and a heartbeat gave you away now did it?

“I know you’re still there,” Damon called out in a sing-song voice.

Being outted seemed to make them rethink their eavesdropping and Damon heard them shuffle off. He waited until he heard them hit the first floor landing before he spoke again. He leaned over Claire, one arm over her thighs as she sipped her glass of blood. Courteously he picked up the blood bag and topped it off.

“Sorry, nosy little brothers and their girlfriends,” Damon excused.

Claire’s warm brown eyes went hard and cold, she lowered the glass. “That’s Stefan?” Thready as her voice was there was an undertone of bitter dark anger to it. Damon wondered at the vehement bile she said his brother’s name with and then he realized he had a potential problem. He knew why Claire didn’t particularly care for Stefan though she had never met him. Because Damon had made the mistake of confiding in her once all that Stefan had done to him. He hadn’t known it had made her hate him sight unseen.

“Uh, uh, uh. Play nice, Claire. He is my brother.”

She gave him an unblinking stare that was complete hate for the little brother Claire knew only by association and a few ill-advised confessionals. Damon had to blink once to shake off the intensity of it.

“For me?” he asked putting on his most charming smile.  She continued to stare at him for a moment, then sighed and looked aside.

“Fine, for you.”

“Thank you,” Damon piped, breathing a silent sigh of relief. Claire angry was not pretty. Her temper was as volatile as Damon’s.  He did not want to be saddled with breaking up a knock down drag out fight between two vampires. It was never fun. Though he still didn’t get why she should hate Stefan so much just because of what Damon had told her. He brushed it off since he had her promise to behave.

Then he crept up the bed a little and began to walk the first two fingers of one hand up the covers and over her body teasingly all charm and seduction again.

“Now then, as much as I adore the thought of you helpless in my bed I’d prefer you naked and more interactive so let’s discuss who dropped you on my doorstep like so much kindling.”

Claire’s expression grew grave and pained. “I told you Damon. Alexander.”

Damon scoffed. “That’s impossible Claire. He’s dead.”

“Apparently, not. He must have escaped the fire. He had me for weeks, Damon. You don’t desiccate a vampire over night. I know who did this.”

“I think the vervain has gotten to your brain. You’re hallucinating,” Damon insisted unable to believe a vampire he had watched burn alive was still up and around.

“Vervain doesn’t cause hallucinations. You know that, Damon,” Claire said in a put upon voice.

Damon sighed. Of course he knew that, but he just wasn’t willing to accept what she was saying.

“Okay,” he said humoring her. “Let’s say for a moment that Alexander is not dead. Why now? Why eighty years later? Why turn you into the vampire mummy?”

“You know why,” Claire said, looking him directly in the eye, the gaze saying a great deal more than the words implied. Damon swallowed apprehensively and looked away unable to meet her gaze for a moment.

“Yeah,” he admitted the single word carrying as much weight as Claire’s had. “So you were sent as a message.”

“Yes,” Claire confirmed.

“Goody, because I don’t have enough drama as it is,” Damon complained. Then he shook his head. “But why wait eighty years? Why didn’t he do this a long time ago?”

“’All things come to he who waits’?” Claire suggested with a light shrug. She sipped from her glass again, licking a drop of stray blood from her full lips.

“But eighty years?” Damon said again.

“You’ve waited longer to accomplish certain goals,” Claire pointed out. Damon’s face fell.

“Yeah,” he muttered morosely, he knew what she was alluding to. His 146-year quest to free Katherine, the woman he had loved and the vampire who had turned him and Stefan from the tomb under Fell’s Church.

When he had finally succeeded in opening the tomb, she hadn’t been there. She had been free this entire time and never told him. When she had finally turned back up in Mystic Falls, it had been for her own nefarious purposes. She had cruelly played with him. Only for her to heartlessly inform him that she had never loved him, she loved Stefan. Everybody loved Stefan. It was always Stefan. Damon had just been her plaything, something to pass the time with. It had devastated him.

“Did you ever…,” Claire started to ask.

“Yeah. That didn’t go so well,” Damon admitted.

Claire’s head tilted and her mouth thinned, her eyes growing soft. “Damon,” she whispered gently, her voice like cool silk on skin. He knew that expression, she felt sorry for him. He hated it. He didn’t need anyone to feel sorry for him. He remembered her voice like that in dark hours, bathed in moonlight. He didn’t need that either.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Damon cut her off and changed the subject.  “How did Alexander get his hands on you anyway? Last time I checked you weren’t exactly the quintessential damsel in distress type. Why didn’t you rip his spine out?”

Claire snorted softly. “He vervained dinner.”

“Oh,” Damon said drawing the word out in realization. Alexander had pulled the same thing on her that Stefan had on him. He’d fed vervain to Claire’s meal on legs and then waited for her to partake. The instant she had it would have disabled her just as it had Damon.  “Ouch,” he hissed in sympathy.

“Wait. How’d he do that? You’re all about the hunt. He couldn’t have known who was for dinner. You never feed off the same person twice,” Damon observed.  Then it hit him. He smiled impishly. “You had a pet. Look at that, taking a page from my book.” He was referencing the tendency of some vampires to ‘keep’ a compelled human as a plaything and walking blood bag. Or in some cases, their habit of keeping one as a controlled surrogate for what they didn’t have in their life. He resolutely denied why it was he knew that. “Hard to imagine you with a pet,” Damon mused, then got back on track, “Okay so still, why did he have you hostage for weeks? Why didn’t Vincent save you? Where is he anyway? You’re never without your erstwhile partner in crime.”

This time it was Claire’s face that fell, crumbling into heartbreaking melancholy. She looked down, her sweaty hair hanging limply over her face, the glass of blood forgotten in her hand. When she looked up there were tears in her eyes.

Damon blinked. He had never seen Claire cry, for any reason. Never. It just wasn’t her thing. It made him very uncomfortable for some reason. “Alexander killed him,” she sobbed and as if saying that aloud seemed to break down some barrier she’d had up, she started crying in earnest. Sad grief stricken sobs.

“Oh. Okay. Come on now, don’t cry. You’ll make your eyes all puffy,” Damon said trying to console her awkwardly. He rubbed her shoulder hesitantly. That just seemed to make it worse. His stomach knotted up for no reason that he could think of and he desperately wanted her to stop crying because it was making a strange feeling slink down his spine that made him want to twitch to rid himself of it.

“He killed Vincent. He made me watch while he did the same thing to him he did to me and then he lit the skewers and burned him alive, slowly. He couldn’t even scream, Damon,” Claire sobbed.

Damon winced at the image. Talk about a horrible way to go. Vincent had been Claire’s constant companion for over a hundred years, Damon knew she was torn in two. Vincent had been to Claire what Sage had been to him and Lexi had been to Stefan. Teacher, friend, hunting partner.

“Alexander always was a crazy son of a bitch,” Damon said.

Claire sobbed harder, managing to find the strength to pull her knees up, wrap her arms around them, and bury her face, her shoulders heaving jerkily. The glass of blood toppled off  her lap and Damon barely, vampiric speed and all, managed to catch it before it spilled. He sat it on the nightstand.  He looked at Claire and sighed, his brow furrowing. He had the desire to gather her up and stroke her hair. He shoved it away. He wasn’t the good guy, he wasn’t compassionate. He was a cold-hearted snake who killed for the fun of it. Claire knew that, it wasn’t as if she would be hurt by his lack of humanity. But she kept crying and the sound made his skin prickle, he had to make her stop.

Briefly, he entertained the idea of just snapping her neck to quiet her. Not as if it would kill her and by the time she came around, the vervain would be out of her system and she wouldn’t be sobbing in his bed anymore. But he didn’t. Instead he gave in his previous compulsion.

“Come here,” he said, shifting to the head of the bed and pulling her close, tucking her head under his chin. He caressed the back of her head soothingly as she curled into him and sobbed into his chest.  “You’re ruining a perfectly good John Varvatos shirt,” he complained of her tears soaking into the fabric of his black button down as if he were only doing this to shut her up. “And I just got you rehydrated. You’re going to undo all my hard work.”

She didn’t seem to hear him, instead one arm went around his abdomen and she hugged him as tight as her weak arms allowed. He continued to stroke her hair and sighed again.

“You just need to sleep off the vervain. Then you’ll be fine,” he promised. “Go to sleep.”  He lamented the fact that he couldn’t actually make his soothing words reality. Had she not been filled with vervain, he could have slipped into her mind and made her sleep as weak as she was right now. It wasn’t something easily done unless the other vampire was weaker but it could be done. He had done it with Rose when she had been dying from a werewolf bite.  But the vervain in Claire’s system precluded him even trying. It would be pointless since it was a form of mind manipulation, not the kind they used on humans that, wouldn’t work on another vampire, but still it was a kind of compulsion. Vervain prevented a vampire from compelling anyone, even another vampire full of it. So instead, he just muttered consoling words in a low litany.

“Go to sleep. Hush little baby don’t say a word. Come on now, go to sleep. You just need to sleep it off.”

He told himself he intended the placations only for her, to humor her, but he wasn’t entirely sure it was just Claire he was telling to sleep something off.

Finally, she seemed to relax and he felt the slow evenness of her breathing, the slowing of her heart beat as she slipped into unconsciousness. The crying had stopped. He squeezed her gently once, slipped out from under her and tucked the sheets over her again.  Her hair was laying in a tumble over her face so he gently brushed it away, tucking it back behind her ear. Her eyelids were redden from crying and her long dark lashes lay starkly against the paleness of her fevered skin.  Damon sighed.

“I’m sorry Claire,” he whispered and told himself he was only saying it to humor her. That he didn’t really mean any of it. Why then, his subconscious said, are you doing it when you know she can’t hear you? Worse, he wasn’t even sure what he was apologizing for…the past or the present.

 

***

 

Damon trotted down the stairs and breezed right past Stefan and Elena, who were again sitting on the couch by the fire. Damon ignored them, grabbing his coat and beginning to shoulder it on.

“So you want to tell me what’s going on now?” Stefan asked pointedly.

“It’s complicated,” Damon said.

“Then uncomplicated it,” Elena suggested.

“Nope,” Damon responded shaking his shoulders to settle his leather jacket into place and checking the pocket for his car keys.  “Claire is sleeping off the vervain. She shouldn’t wake until morning. Don’t worry about her eating the locals. Breakfast is waiting for her.” Damon strode for the door.

Stefan moved. One second he was sitting on the couch next to Elena, one foot propped on his knee casually the next he was blocking the path to the front door.

“You really want to do this?” Damon asked his voice laced with sarcasm and ire.

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on,” Stefan said firmly.

Damon shrugged. “Fine. Have it your way.” Then he reached for his brother with blinding speed intending to shove him out of his way but Stefan dodged it then bolted back into position.

“Who is Alexander?” Stefan asked.

Damon scowled his pale blue eyes going cold. “Oh no one. Just this old, bat shit crazy vampire who I thought was a crispy critter and is apparently now out for revenge. So if you’ll excuse me I’d like to go find him and kill him…again.”  He tried to shoulder past his brother but Stefan stepped with him, glaring at him with quiet anger.

“Elena, control your boyfriend before I break his arms,” Damon said looking back over his shoulder at her and giving her a mockingly sweet smile. She had risen but was standing a little apart watching, her pretty face set with concern.

“So yet again some petty act of violence from eighty years ago has come back to bite you in the ass and we all get to suffer for it. Just never changes with you does it Damon?” Stefan snapped irritated with his brother’s refusal to give him an explanation.

“You were eavesdropping,” Damon said darkly. “I don’t eavesdrop on you and your girlfriend now do I? That’s rude Stefan.”

“Didn’t have much of a choice did I? Since you won’t tell me anything,” Stefan spat back. Damon shrugged again.

“You don’t need to know.”

“Damon, Stefan,” Elena said from behind them trying to intercede. Damon’s hackles were up for some reason and Stefan was worried that the problem that had landed literally on their doorstep would be a danger to her. Things could get very heated very quickly. They ignored her.

Damon tried again to step past his brother and this time Stefan stepped aside. Thinking he had won the argument, Damon swaggered for the door but he didn’t get three paces before Stefan threw another barb at him.

“Is that what she is? Claire? Or was? Your girlfriend?”

Damon stopped and turned half way back. “We had a thing,” he admitted and then set on his way again without a backward glance.

“Or was she Alexander’s girlfriend and you killed him, unsuccessfully, so you could have her? That what makes it so ‘complicated’?”

Damon snapped before he could stop himself, in a blink he had retraced his steps in a dead run, nothing but a blur to human eyes. He grabbed Stefan roughly by the front of his shirt and jacked him up against the wall of the foyer, hard, his arm pressed across his brother’s chest to pin him. Damon got nose to nose with Stefan, eyes a cold and malevolent blue.

“Don’t talk about what you don’t understand,” he growled.

“I’ll talk about anything I want as long as I think it might be a threat to Elena,” Stefan rasped back the pressure on his chest making it hard to speak.

“Damon, stop!” Elena pleaded. She rushed forward and griped his arm, stopping short of trying to pry him off Stefan since she knew it would be pointless. There was no way she as a human had a hope of breaking Damon’s grip.

“He doesn’t want Elena. He wants me and Claire. Elena is not in any danger. Stay out of it,” Damon seethed. “Now unless you want me to wait until bodies start dropping around town, I am going to find Alexander and put him down. Because believe me, he’s not on board with the vegan lifestyle.” He looked at Elena who was beginning to appear desperately worried that things might come to blows and relented. His face relaxed a little and he let go of Stefan, letting him slide down the wall to stand wobbly on his feet. Stefan rubbed his clavicle where Damon’s arm had been baring down on it.

Damon turned on his heel and stalked out the door.

“Damon!” Elena called after him.

“Let him go,” Stefan said, glaring after him.

“No, he might get himself killed,” Elena said and rushed after him. Stefan threw up his hands.

“If he does it’s his own fault!” he called as the door slammed in her wake.

Outside Elena ran to catch up to Damon who was already off the doorstep and half way up the drive to his Camaro. He walked stiffly, his spine ramrod straight with anger.

“Damon! Wait!” Elena called after him.

“Go back in the house Elena. You own it now. You’ll be perfectly safe. Alexander can’t come in unless you invite him,” Damon threw back over his shoulder.

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Elena said, catching up to him, her breath heaving in her chest. “I’m worried about you.” Damon stopped and turned back a perplexed and oddly touched expression on his face.

“Aw. I didn’t know you cared,” he teased all caustic charm again. Elena gave him a put upon look.

“You know I care Damon. You’re my friend,” Elena said. Damon blinked and looked down at the keys in his hand jostling them absently.

“Right,” he agreed. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” He started to turn to go again but she caught his arm. He stopped.

“This Alexander, why does he want revenge? What’s the story there? Was Stefan right?” she asked.

“There is no story. No, Stefan’s not right,” Damon insisted with irritation. “He’s never right.”

“Then what is? There’s always a story,” Elena insisted with just as much vexation. Damon groaned.

“Really there’s not.”

“Damon, please,” Elena pleaded. Damon rolled his eyes and sighed.

“Okay, for you anything,” he said with playful mocking. He was hiding behind the ruse of his go-to, nonchalant, devil-may-care attitude because what he really feared was Elena digging past the crap he piled up over his emotions and finding out the truth. Wearing a vervain necklace, it wasn’t as if he could compel her to forget it if she found out. Not like he had compelled her that night in her bedroom when he had retrieved that same necklace for her. “Claire and I met. We had sex, we drank a lot, I pissed off Alexander and then I set him on fire. Now he’s more pissed.”

“Damon,” Elena chastised him, her hands on her hips.

Damon chuckled and shook his head. “Elena,” he said back in the same irritated tone. She just glared at him. “You’re fishing for some torrid love story where there isn’t one.”

“Then why did you tell Stefan ‘not to talk about what he didn’t understand’?”

“Because he made me mad. He was blocking the way out,” Damon said brushing her off.

Elena crossed her arms and shifted her weight to one leg glaring at him harder. Damon arched a brow.

“You’re like a terrier with a bone. You aren’t going to let this go are you?”

He should have been angry with her. He should have been angrier than he had been with Stefan, Elena kept digging far harder than his brother had. But he just couldn’t be. Not that he wasn’t perturbed at her constant, willful, unrelenting need to try to drag a little humanity out of him.

“No. I’m not. Alexander, whoever he is, found you all the way in Mystic Falls. Dumped your tortured ex-girlfriend on the doorstep,” Elena said.

“She’s wasn’t my girlfriend,” Damon interjected. Elena ran right over him, her eyes narrowing.

 “…and wants you dead. He’s had eighty years and he does it now? That sounds like he has been planning this for a very long time. He doesn’t sound crazy to me. How did he even find you? How was he walking in daylight?”

Damon let out a long breath. “Oh Alexander is completely insane trust me but he’s not stupid. Either he’s got a daylight ring or he doesn’t mind a little self immolation to get the job done. I’m betting the latter. Daylight rings aren’t exactly easy to come by.”

He did wonder about that. Vampires in direct sunlight didn’t exactly have a slow burn time without one of the spelled lapis lazuli rings he and Stefan possessed. Rings created by witches to allow them to walk in daylight. Alexander should have toasted himself dropping Claire on the door step but he hadn’t. He’d escaped unscathed.

That worried Damon. Either Alexander had gone a little crazier than Damon remembered or he’d found himself a witch crazy enough to make him a ring. Either way it spelled crazy and Alexander was dangerous enough without the ability to walk around whenever and where ever he liked.

“Then you need to stop being. You’re reacting on impulse. He didn’t wait eighty years just to let you waltz out the door and stake him.”

“I’m not reacting on impulse but you’re right,” Damon admitted. He wasn’t being impulsive. No, he just wanted to remedy the situation quickly because Alexander had a penchant for starting small and building. If Claire was an indication of his jump off point there was no telling how far he would escalate if he wasn’t stopped quickly. But Elena had a point. He had to figure out what Alexander’s game was first.

“Now what’s the real story?” Elena pressed. Damon gave a whining groan.

It was obvious Elena was not going to let it go. Hardheaded women were going to be the death of him one day.

“It’s this twisted ‘Phantom of the Opera’ thing. It’s utterly boring believe me.”

“Tell me anyway,” Elena said.

“Elena,” Damon protested like a child.

“At least tell me how you met Claire,” Elena said relenting a little.

“Fine, if it’ll get you off my back. But you’re going to be disappointed,” Damon said giving in. He shuffled forward a bit heading off to the side of the house and a bench where he could sit with Elena and talk. Hopefully, far enough away that Stefan couldn’t eaves drop. Elena fell in step with him, all ears.

“It was the ‘Roaring Twenties’. 1927 to be exact. Chicago was the place to be and Claire was concentrated fun in a bottle….”

 

***

 

_‘The Red Ivy’ was alight with a buzz of activity. From where Damon was sitting at the bar, a tumbler of illegal bourbon at his elbow, he had an overarching view of the entire lounge’s floor. Red velvet drapes hid the yellow and cracked brick walls and the tiled floor had been polished to a shiny finish. Little tables with white table cloths were set out on the floor, most surrounded by people busy laughing, talking and enjoying dinner and prohibited spirits while a jazz band played. The rest of the floor was thronged with eager flappers in their short dresses and bobbed hair with their gentlemen courters as they danced to the dulcet sounds of the lovely red headed singer who was currently crooning ‘The Man I Love’._

_Several of the women dancing had cast him desirous looks now and again. He reveled in it. He knew what they saw. A rakishly handsome solitary man, his black hair slicked back wearing a tailored pin stripe suit with a blue tie that matched his eyes, his homburg hat sat on the bar beside him. The females were on the prowl tonight, he could have had his pick of any one of them. But Damon had his eye on the slim chanteuse with an eye to other things when she finally took a break. She looked positively delicious._

_Until then he would content himself with the music. He emptied the last swallow of his drink then motioned at the bartender to top off his glass. The man nodded in acknowledgement and tossed down the rag he had been polishing glasses with, turning to fetch a bottle from the golden oak shelves behind him._

_“Lovely isn’t she?” a voice purred in Damon’s ear from over his shoulder so close he could feel the heat of the person’s breath on his skin and if he wasn’t mistaken the voice belonged to a woman._

_He smiled faintly to himself, thinking some girl with more gumption than sense had decided to try to snag him. Foolish girl. Maybe he would let the singer be and partake elsewhere tonight.   Damon leaned forward a bit to avoid knocking over whom ever had invaded his personal space, turning on his stool and found himself looking at a woman with black hair in marcel waves around her head, the ends curling just beneath her ears. A red off the shoulder bias cut dress with gold trim slinked over her figure to her knees, showing shapely legs, the color setting off a pair of warm mahogany eyes. She had a face that was innocent and naive, soft featured with a pert little nose and full lips that were made to be kissed. Yes, he could trade red for brunette tonight._

_“But I’m afraid she’s taken,” the woman said. Her lipstick matched the dress. Damon smirked winningly._

_“Is she now?” he said._

_“I’m afraid so,” the woman said apologetically and then a smile as catty as any of his own slid across her face. He grinned back. So that was the game._

_“That’s unfortunate,” Damon lamented. He looked piercingly into her eyes and reached out a long fingered hand, running the backs of two down the line of her throat where he’d like to sink his teeth. She never moved and he smiled. Guileless. Already she was falling under his compulsion. Then she surprised him, her head tilted slightly in amusement. She reached up catching his hand and leaned to whisper in his ear at the same time._

_“Unless you care to share.”_

_Damon stiffened for a beat in surprise. She’d let him do what he had. He couldn’t compel her, she was a vampire too.  Up until he’d revealed himself, he’d been as much her prey as she had been his. The inability to sense others of their kind could be a real pain in the ass. They didn’t know any better than a human did if the person they were talking to was another vampire unless they showed it outright or said it. Of course the instant he had tried to compel her she had known what he was. The woman stepped back and looked like the cat who ate the canary. She held out a fine boned hand to him._

_“I’m Claire,” she introduced.  Damn smiled wider. She was audacious and bold._

_“Damon,” he said taking her hand and pressing his lips to the back of it teasingly. He released it and caught her eyes with his ice blue ones. There was a predatory gleam in hers that had nothing to do with blood lust.  Hunter had become hunted. Damon could handle that._

_“A pleasure to meet you, Damon. Buy a girl a drink?”_

_Damon inclined his head and motioned to the stool next to him. She slid atop it gracefully. His eyes roved over her with frank interest. Who said the hunter who became hunted couldn’t hunt back_?

“And that’s all there is to tell,” Damon said mildly. He leaned back on the bench and draped an arm along the back.

Elena blinked and her brow furrowed. “That’s it?” she said suspiciously.

“Well,” Damon said grinning impishly. “There was all the steamy sex but I thought I’d spare you the details.”

Elena glared at him long suffering. “That can’t be it,” Elena insisted. Damon laughed at her incredulity.

“You asked me how I met Claire, that’s how I met her,” Damon said. He had told her the complete truth; it was her own fault for not asking him to tell her more than that. He stood up, car keys jingling in his hand.  “Now, I’m going to find our ‘not dead, dead vampire’.”

“Damon…,” Elena began to protest, rising to stay him.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. I’m just going to canvas the hotels. Ask around at the Grill, see if anyone has seen him.  I’m not going to confront him… yet,” he promised, smiling brightly at her real concern for his well fare. He couldn’t help it. Whenever she showed an ounce of feeling, it made so sadistic part of him jump for joy. He knew she loved his brother and always would. But there it was. Damon was just too ‘vampire’ for Elena. And then there was Claire.

“At least take Stefan with you,” Elena pleaded.

“And leave you alone in the house with a disabled vampire? Because that went so well last time,” Damon said, there was an undercurrent of bitter regret there. The last time Elena had been alone in the house with a disabled vampire it had been Rose, a casual lover of Damon’s, Katherine’s sire and the victim of a werewolf bite that had killed her from a werewolf that had been coming after Damon. Before she had died she had begun hallucinating, mistaking Elena for Katherine and nearly killing her. Damon shoved the memory aside he preferred not to think about that disaster. Guilt, remorse and grief came with it.

Elena made a dissatisfied noise and crossed her arms petulantly.

“Look, Alexander can’t come in unless he’s invited but I don’t know what his game is yet. He has no reason to target you but I’d feel a lot better if I knew you had someone here to protect you. Claire’s not going to be worth anything until tomorrow so that leaves Stefan. I’ll be fine, Elena,” Damon said gently grasping her upper arms and looking down into her eyes earnestly.

“You still haven’t told me why he’s so bent on revenge against you,” Elena said relenting on asking him not to go.

“I told you, I tried to kill him,” Damon said.

“Damon…,” Elena began to protest. Damon gave her a wan smile.

“I’ll see you later, Elena,” he said and then he was gone. A second later, his car door slammed and the engine roared. Elena was left watching the taillights of his blue 1969 Camaro convertible skim down the drive. She sighed heavily. He’d told her what she asked and yet told her absolutely nothing.

 

***

Elena walked back to the house, the gravel crunching under foot on the drive. She pushed through the front door and shut it behind her with a frustrated shove, which made a click that echoed through the foyer. Stefan appeared at the end of it, his arms crossed expectantly.

“Were you listening?” Elena asked tucking a piece of her very long hair behind her ear.

“No, not this time. I figured if he said anything worth knowing you’d tell me,” Stefan said as Elena went to him. “So did he?”

Elena shook her head. “Not really. He told me how he met Claire in 1927. They met in a speakeasy in Chicago called ‘The Red Ivy’. He said it was a ‘twisted Phantom of the Opera thing’. I don’t know what he meant by that. He was really evasive. I don’t know what he’s hiding.”

Stefan shook his head at his brother’s stubbornness. “Don’t worry I’ll get it out of him when he gets back.”

“No, don’t,” Elena said quickly. “I’ll get him to tell me. It might bit by bit but I will.”

Stefan’s thick brows kinked, nearly touching. “Why are you so Pro-Damon all of a sudden? He’s the one who did something stupid eighty years ago and now we might all be in danger because of it.”

Elena let out a long breath. “I just, I think there’s something else going on here,” she said. She did feel that way but she couldn’t place her finger on why. Maybe it was the way he’d looked at Claire when he’d thought Elena wasn’t looking, or how angry he’d gotten at Stefan when he’d needled him about stealing Claire from another man for kicks but something about all this was just not the same old Damon bull crap.

“Like what?” Stefan asked crossing his arms as if he was already set on not listening.

“I don’t know. Something just feels different about it. The way he was when he figured out who was under that blanket. It was like he was panicked and horrified. Damon doesn’t do ‘horrified.’ And when he was patching her up I’d swear he was almost…tender about it when he didn’t look like he was infuriated about what had been done to her,” she explained.

Stefan scoffed. “So you think Damon is hiding something because he cares about her? You do remember that Damon is a sociopath right?”

“Stefan…,” Elena admonished. Damon could be cold, calculating and yes, a murdering sociopath who didn’t care who got hurt as long as he got what he wanted but it had been a while since he had been that way. Sort of. Damon would always be Damon, but Elena knew there was a good person hiding under all that snarky crap he spouted. “You saw how mad he got when you said that to him about stealing her from this Alexander guy.”

“Yeah, probably because I was right,” Stefan insisted leaning against the edge of the wall that let out into the living room from the foyer.

“I don’t think so, Stefan,” Elena insisted back. “I mean you heard them earlier when he took Claire upstairs. What did you think?” Stefan sighed and then paused, eyes casting off into the distance a moment.

“There was one thing.”

“What?” Elena asked.

“He apologized to her.”

“For what?”

Stefan shrugged the shoulder not against the wall. “I don’t know. He never said.”

Elena sighed. She knew something was going on other than a simple revenge plot on Damon and his former lover but not what. It was frustrating.

“I was kinda harsh on him wasn’t I?” Stefan said with a hint of chagrin. Elena chortled lightly.

“Yeah, a little.”

Stefan sighed again and pushed off the wall. He took a step toward her and gathered Elena into his embrace wrapping his arms tight around her and resting his chin on her hair. “I’m just worried. This whole thing with Klaus and now this. I’m worried something might happen to you and I couldn’t live with that. Damon being all mysterious just makes me crazy.”

Elena hugged him back, nuzzling into his chest her voice soft and sweet. “I know,” she said. “Damon makes everybody crazy. Maybe Claire will be less reticent when she wakes up.”

Stefan rubbed her back affectionately. “Maybe.” He tilted Elena’s head back gently.

“I love you, Elena.”

“I love you too,” she said smiling at him tenderly. He smiled back softly and kissed her.

 

***

 

Damon shoved his glass across the bar and waved at the bar tender for another refill. The bar tender refilled his glass and Damon gave him a slightly blurry eyed nodded. It was, he looked at his watch, twelve minutes to midnight. He had spent the day going from hotels to motels to bed and breakfasts quizzing the tenants and personnel of each under compulsion. Not one of them had seen anyone who looked anything like Alexander. They’d had no one rent a room fitting his description either.

Then he’d come here to the ‘Mystic Grill’, the local watering hole and the town’s main hang out, and asked conversationally if anyone had seen anyone new around. In a town as small as Mystic Falls, new folks didn’t go unnoticed unless they meant to. But, just like with the hotels, no one had seen Alexander. Wherever he was, Alexander was keeping an extremely low profile. That had been two hours ago.

Canvassing for Alexander had forced Damon to think about the events that led to him trying to kill the crazed vampire. He’d never thought he would see Claire again. But now that she’d been dumped on his doorstep he was faced with more than a revenge obsessed insane vampire. He had to face his past. Nostalgia sucked.

Damon had meant only to have a drink, maybe two, on the idle chance someone might stumble in who had seen Alexander. Or maybe Alaric, grudging best friend slash high school history teacher slash occasional punching bag, would come in and he could recruit him to his purpose. But no. Alaric, otherwise known as ‘Ric’, was nowhere to be found and Damon’s ‘drink or two’ had progressed into a drink or six.

Now Damon was, irrationally, sitting on a green upholstered barstool, drowning in round number seven and fighting the urge to slide into a bout of emotionally conflicted melancholy.  He fought it harder. The sappy ass pop song playing on the jukebox was not helping. Something about sleeping with ghosts and phantom ships lost at sea.

“Hey,” he called to the bar tender who was busy stocking shelves. “Ric been in today?”

The bartender looked up and shook his head. “I’m sorry I don’t know who you mean.”

“Tall guy, sandy hair, wears this big ugly blue ring on one hand. Usually drinks with me,” Damon offered. How could the bar tender not know Alaric’s name as often as the two of them frequented the place?

“Oh, him,” the bar tender said, recognizing the description. “No, haven’t seen him tonight.” He went back to stacking fresh bottles on the shelves from boxes on the floor behind the bar.

Damon groaned. “Typical. I’m having my second existential crisis in three months and Alaric turns into a teetotaler on me. Dick.” He picked up his glass and tossed back a mouthful. He’s cell phone rang and he automatically fumbled for it in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the screen, it was Elena. She was probably calling to see if he had run into trouble considering the hour. “Speaking of…,” he muttered but he answered.

“Hi. No, I haven’t found him. I’m fine. Leave me alone,” he said before she had the chance to say anything and hung up. He turned the phone off. Elena. She was the last person he wanted to talk to just now. _There’s a can of worms I never need to open again_ , he thought taking a drink of bourbon, his features dimly lit by the lowered lighting in the establishment. She was half of why he was drowning himself right now. And that set off the other half of his reason for seeking to inebriate himself. One thing pushed against the other, cause and effect. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. History repeating. Damon’s evasive but truthful recounting of how he had met Claire to Elena, which was an irony in itself, had sent him spiraling dangerously close to a whirlpool of memories he thought best left alone. He hadn’t lied to Elena…he’d just stopped before he reached the good part.

 Damon stared down into the amber liquid in his glass; tilting it back and forth and watching it swirl…and fell in. In an instant, he was back in ‘The Red Ivy’ all those years ago, only moments after he’d invited Claire to take a seat…


	2. Chapter 2

_Damon set his glass down, laughing. They had been chatting idly for a bit and he’d found Claire had as unique a sense of humor as he did._

_“So,” he said changing the subject and motioned to her glass. “Wild Turkey? That’s not exactly a ladies drink.”_

_Claire smiled slyly. “Maybe I’m not a lady.”_

_Damon chuckled letting his eyes trail over her hungrily. Her lips quirked knowingly as she cast him a sideways glance, one prim heeled foot bouncing gently in time to the music. The red haired singer was still crooning softly. Damon hoped she’d take that break soon so he and Claire could share that meal they had discussed._

_“Are you just visiting ‘The Windy City’ or  are you from here?” Claire asked._

_“I’m from Virginia. But I’m living here… for now. You?”_

_“Living here…for now,” she answered._

_“Isn’t that always the way…’for now’? Damon said, he waggled his eyebrows a bit in shared humor. For someone who had eternity stretched out in front of them, everything was ‘for now’.  Claire smiled and sipped her bourbon._

_“Where are you from?” Damon asked, turning her own question back on her._

_“Georgia actually.”_

_“A southern belle. Where is that sweet southern drawl then?” Damon asked, for Claire had none. She spoke with perfect and unaccented enunciation but then Damon’s own accent had faded over the years._

_“It died a terrible death long ago,” Claire joked. Damon laughed._

_“That’s a shame. That deceivingly innocent face with a naïve ‘su’thrn’ accent would make you twice as deadly because you certainly can’t tell that under that pretty visage is a big sharp pair of fangs.”_

_“All the better to eat you with my dear,” Claire said flirtatiously quoting the big bad wolf from ‘Red Riding Hood.”_

_Damon grinned. “Mmm,” he said and resisted the urge to lick his lips at the suggestion._

_“There’s the wildcat,” a man’s british accented voice said interrupting them. Claire arched a brow but didn’t look toward the voice. Damon did. A man in his mid thirties with chocolate brown hair worn in the slicked back fashion of the day , a thin white streak at the right temple running from back to front where he had begun to gray early,  stood there looking a little harried. A bowler hat dangled casually in his hand in the same shade of dark blue as his suit, which was a bit rumpled now, though the remains of the creases in the man’s slacks showed that when he’d put it on it had been immaculate. The man looked Damon over in one fleeting glimpse that made him feel like he was being measure with a yardstick. “And corrupting the male populace as always I see,” the man remarked with amusement._

_Damon eyed him. Who was he? Was this guy Claire’s beau that she’d conveniently forgotten to mention? Damon didn’t really care for the idea of a jealous lover taking a swing at him because his girl had stepped out on him._

_“You are late,” Claire said mildly to the man. The man sighed regretfully._

_“I know, love. Forgive me. Last minute details got completely out of hand and before I knew it, I’d lost track of time. Philippe Perrin is still insisting on that atrocious trompe l'oeil.You’d think the bloody Queen was coming or something,” the man said at first apologetic and then mildly outraged. He kissed her head in apology in an affectionate but distinctly unromantic way. Though Damon had no idea what the man was talking about, there was something affluent about him despite his casual conversation and middle class attire. It was as if he were out of time. Displaced from another era. He wouldn’t have been out of place alongside Damon’s father at their swank mansion during one of the formal balls Damon had attended while he’d still been human. But he put Damon in mind more of English courts and grand banquets than anything._

_Claire sighed in feigned reluctance. “I forgive you. This time.”_

_The man let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “I shall be forever grateful Ms. Dominic.”_

Claire Dominic. That had a ring to it. Rolled off the tongue nicely _, Damon thought._

_The man turned to Damon though his query was aimed at Claire. “Who is your new friend?”_

_Claire began to introduce him and then stopped. Damon smiled faintly in amusement at her expression. She couldn’t introduce him by more than his first name, they’d never gotten to exchanging surnames. “Damon Salvatore,” Damon said offering his hand politely._

_“Vincent Addison. Pleased to make your acquaintance Mr. Salvatore. I do hope Claire hasn’t been too forward with you.”_

_Claire gave Vincent a beleaguered look._

_The man’s formal manner was an interesting juxtaposition to Claire’s bolder approach. Though he didn’t doubt from the way Claire held herself, back straight shoulders relaxed—poised was the word Damon was looking for--that she could be just as formal and mannerly if she chose to be._

_“Not at all. It’s refreshing actually,” Damon assured him, smiling in Claire’s direction appreciatively._

_Claire cast Vincent a petulant glance._

_“Glad to hear it,” Vincent said. “Now then,” he said directing himself to Claire. “Have you found dinner yet? I’m famished.”_

_Damon blinked. ‘Found’ dinner? Could it be?_

_“Well,” Claire said, “I was going to eat him.” She gave Damon a coy look. “But then he tried to compel me. So, I’m afraid I’ll have to look elsewhere.”_

_It was. Vincent was a vampire as well. Now his manner toward Claire made sense. Vincent was to Claire what Sage had been to Damon. Teacher and student. Though with their kind that could get rather complicated. The line where teacher and student and casual lovers met often blurred, if it had ever existed at all.  He might even well be the one who had turned her as Damon had been turned by Katherine. However, if he had, their relationship had turned out to be significantly less cursed than Damon’s. It never crossed his mind that Vincent might be the younger of the two; his formal disposition placed him firmly in the old world._

_Vincent arched a brow at Damon and smiled a genuinely pleased smile. “Always glad to meet another of our ilk,” he said making the same realization Damon had. They were among kindred._

_“Likewise,” Damon agreed, his eyes straying again to Claire and fixating on one smooth calf as she crossed those lithe legs. Vincent chuckled deeply._

_“Why do I think it’s not my company you appreciate?”_

_It was good humored, not the bitter edged vitriol of a spurned lover._ So not a couple _, Damon thought happily._ Hunting companions and friends. Good. He wouldn’t find any resistance from Vincent if he dallied with Claire.  _Damon grinned rakishly._

_“Yours should be available shortly,” Claire said._

_“Oh, lovely. White or red?” Vincent asked. Damon was momentarily confused. White or red? Were they talking blood or wine? Then it hit him, white or red, red or blonde. Claire had preselected Vincent’s meal for him. The singer._

_“Red,” Claire said casting an eye toward her. Vincent looked where Claire’s eyes had wandered._

_“Good choice,” Vincent said approvingly, a familiar rush of bloodlust flashing in his eyes._

_“Only,” Claire said, dragging the word out teasingly. “You were late and so I promised to share with Damon. So you’ll have to find your own.” She looked at Vincent with triumphant glee._

_Vincent gasped as if injured. “You wound me!” he declared theatrically. “Vengeance is yours, cruel woman. I shall never be late to dinner again.” Damon couldn’t help but laugh. Here were two vampires who knew how to have a good time._

_“Fine. I shall endeavor to find something suitable,” Vincent sighed regretfully. Then he leaned forward, making his voice low and conspiratory. Damon and Claire instinctively bent their heads in imitation. Vincent grinned like a predator. “Well then Ladies and Gentlemen, the hunt is on. Shall we?”_

_With that, Vincent spun on his heel and disappeared into the crowd in search of prey. Damon gave Claire a cocky smile and then offered her his arm. She smiled back and took it. Together they strolled casually around the club, skirting the dancers and heading in a circuitous route toward the alcove booth seating in the rear portion of the club that broke off from the main area like an ‘L’. It took them right past the band as the singer stepped down to take her break, her long red hair flouncing around her shoulders in rhythm with the feathered boa that rode loosely in the crook of her arms._

_Damon waited until she started to pass them by unnoticed and reached out covertly grapping her hand. He paused, anticipating the woman’s inevitable reaction. She looked down at her hand, frowned and looked up to see who the offender was. The moment she did Damon had her. He caught her gaze and focused, Claire quietly going along. He stared into her eyes and she became very still, frozen by his own._

_“Join us,” he commanded in a whisper._

_The woman smiled brightly. “Sure,” she agreed compliantly as if it had been what she wanted to do all along. Compelling her took only moments. The woman never released Damon’s hand so with Claire on one arm and the lovely red head on the other he escorted them both to the booths._

_It took Vincent a bit longer to snare his prey since he had to decide whom to snare from the throng of patrons. But when he found his mark, he was no less swift about it. In a blink it seemed he had a dishwater blonde bedecked in the quintessential fringed flapper dress, complete with sequined headband sporting a spray of feathers in front, following at his side like a meek kitten._

_***_

_Damon withdrew his fangs reluctantly from the red head’s throat, savoring the rush of warm blood through his body. At the same time, Claire pulled back from the other side. She wasted not a drop, using her tongue to catch a droplet on her full lips. The blood matched her lipstick and her breath was coming in sated gasps as her eyes phased back to normal and her fangs retracted. Damon smiled, a woman who enjoyed herself and took no shame in it._

_They had been back here for Damon didn’t know how long. Drinking, chatting, laughing, until he had lost all track of time. He found himself having a genuinely good time and Claire was concentrated fun in a bottle. There didn’t seem to be anything that was off limits to her. Not a single topic swayed her and she was witty on top of it. It had been a long while since Damon had come across a woman, much less another vampire, who kept his attention so long without boring him._

_The singer’s head was leaned on the back of the bench. She was moaning softly, faint but none the worse for wear. The band had continued to play on, favoring mellow brass instrumentals whilst their singer took her ‘break’. Damon eased her upright and the woman blinked, disoriented under compulsion. He slid her boa up over her shoulders and draped it around her neck, wrapping it to cover the punctures in her neck and pulled her close with it.  “Thank you sweetheart. You were delicious. You can go now.” He released her from his compulsion and she started to rise, to part the velvet curtains of the alcove that had hidden their little soiree._

_Claire reached out and grasped the woman’s wrist.  The woman looked back. Claire’s eyes contracted, when she caught her eye. “You had a wonderful time. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”_

_“Yes. I will,” the woman said absently, smiling brightly as her mind obeyed Claire’s compulsion. The woman left dropping the curtain behind her. Damon watched her go with a faintly intrigued air. Claire had deliberately made it so the woman would remember having a great time with them and ensured no matter what happened she’d enjoy the rest._

_“That was an interesting technique,” Damon observed. It wasn’t that he disagreed with it but most vampires didn’t bother with ensuring their prey enjoyed it. It wasn’t necessary. Compelled they’d never remember it anyway and vampires lived for the hunt the feed and the kill, albeit the kill was not well advised in a club full of people who might notice if you sucked someone dry.  Any vampire stupid enough to do it, deserved what they got but the urge to kill was always there, lingering. The key was enjoying the hunt and the feed enough to be able to resist the desire to kill your prey. Damon lived by the rules ‘snatch, eat, erase’. Apparently so did Claire, she just liked adding a little something to the ‘erase’._

_Vincent, whose catch had her arm around him while his head was ducked, his fangs buried in her wrist,  withdrew and wiped his lips neatly on a napkin. He smiled at Claire who lounged back so much like a contented cat on a velvet cushion Damon fully expected her to start purring._

_“Claire, all things being equal, prefers that all parties involved enjoy themselves in the name of well…fun. Unless of course, they make her angry or they’re miscreants.” Vincent paused a beat. “Or they just irritate her. Claire has a bit of an issue with impulse control.”_

_Damon tilted his head a bit. “Enforced fun. I can certainly agree with that.” He grinned wickedly. “There’s something to be said for impulsivity.”_

_“Here, here,” Claire agreed, throwing back the last of her bourbon and thunking the glass on the table._

_“But certainly, Claire has never attended a party where fun was not had by all.”_

_“I don’t doubt it,” Damon said with a salacious smile aimed in her direction. Claire lifted her brows and smiled back, her eyes wandering over him suggestively. The night was certainly turning out to be better than Damon had planned._

_Vincent released the blonde on his arm, catching her under the chin with one finger and holding her gaze. “You nicked yourself on a broken glass, dear. You should bandage that up. Have a good night.” The woman blinked twice, looking down in mild surprise at her wrist._

_“Oh, I’ve nicked myself on a broken glass. I should probably go bandage this up,” she said and slipped away. That was the beauty of compulsion and the error of it. One had to be very careful what one compelled someone to do. They would follow the command to the letter._

_Flippantly compelling someone to ‘go jump off a bridge’ because they had annoyed you would result in them literally jumping off a bridge._

_The band segued into a more upbeat tango and Claire suddenly came to life, no longer the sleek feline but a bubbly and exuberant girl._

_“Oh a tango!” she exclaimed, her eyes seemed to nearly light up._

_Vincent already had his hands up, palms out to stay her. “Oh no. I had quite enough of dancing in my youth, thank you very much.”_

_Claire’s bottom lip poked out in a pout. Apparently, this was not something new for Vincent. He had been prepared to refuse her before she could even begin to ask. Damon, being Damon, seized the opportunity. Wordlessly, he stood up and held his hand out in invitation. Claire was quick to take it._

_He led her from the booth with a sideways grin, his eyes locked on hers. From the moment she had accepted his hand the dance was in progress. He led her toward the dance floor and she followed, their arms stretched between them as far as they would go, he walking backward with long flowing strides, her pulling against his progress just enough for the feigned resistance to his charms the dance required. This was not your mother’s Tango. He wasn’t leading her in the ‘proper’ version favored in America. He was intent on doing it the way the dance was intended. The Tango was a dance of seduction._

_As he got her to the floor, threading between the other dancers who were already twirling around them in the more sedate variety he pulled on her hand reeling her in, in a spin that put him behind her, her back pressed to his chest while his leading arm encircled her waist. His mouth hovered at her ear. “I love dancing,” he whispered with a throaty whisper. He reversed the spin sending her away from him and pulling her back in sharply so she had to hook one leg over his, her back bent away from him slightly in ‘resistance’. He let her go, sliding out to finger tips again, eyes always locked as they circled in step with one another as he ‘led’ her. Then suddenly he pulled her to him, catching her in one arm and letting her dip backward, she ‘succumbed’ a bit. One hand caressing along the side of his neck, their lips close enough to kiss. The intent of the dance was to always hover on the brink of ‘almost’._

_“So do I,” she whispered, her breath warm on his cheek. Damon grinned wider. He was having fun with this. There was the constant tension between them, the knowledge that one wanted the other and the teasing of what might come later._

_He righted her and they began the push and pull across the dance floor with the rest of the dancers, albeit theirs was far more heated. Some of the others stopped to watch in shades of frank shock or veiled appreciation as they moved, Claire’s skirts flying around her legs to good effect. They continued on that way, touching, resisting, seducing until the teasing ceased to be feigned and became something more tangible. The provocative graze along the neck, the slightly slower than necessary slide of a leg over a hip, finger tips gliding over skin. The dance was a conversation all by itself made all the more titillating by the fact that something so intimate was done in full view of others._

_By the time the song ended Damon could quite happily have gotten out of there and gone somewhere more private with no regret but the tug on his hand as the band dashed from the tango into a fox trot, something slow enough to keep from winding the would-be dancers but still peppy, he allowed himself to be pulled back ._

_“You’re good at this,” he remarked, pleased as he led her jauntily around the floor. Neither were breathing heavily, a vampire’s stamina far exceeded a human’s. It would take a lot more than a tango to have either of them out of breath—from dancing at least. Damon really did adore dancing. It was one of his favorite things to do and not only did Claire seem to enjoy it as much as he did, she was good at it._

_“I like to think so,” Claire said impishly._

_“Mmm,” Damon said. “Not a drop of humility in you is there?”_

_“Not a drop,” she agreed._

_“I like it,” he chuckled._

_When the fox trot moved into the Baltimore Buzz, a faster paced dance than the fox trot or the tango, Damon ceased to even notice the rest of the people in the club. Once he had seen Vincent amid the crowd, he had moved from the booth and was animatedly chatting with someone a drink in hand, one eye on the dance floor. He had given Damon a short nod and smiled approvingly with his glass raised._

_Claire leaned into him as they moved the slow then fast syncopation if the music, her body pressed scandalously close. “I’m still hungry,” she said in a hushed tone, her breath teasing his ear. Damon chuckled pulling back so he could see her face, she was grinning at him devilishly. He grinned back._

_“Well, we can’t have that can we?” he grinned back and spun her under his arm catching the next tasty looking couple to pass by._

_“Care to trade?” he asked. The man inclined his head and happily traded dancing partners with him in the interest of a good time. Seamlessly Damon switched with him, scooping up the nameless man’s partner and whisking her along the floor. Claire joined with the man and in short order had her teeth sunk into his neck with no one the wiser. A loose girl necking with a strange man in a drunken crowd. Neither did they bother to notice the tomcat that was Damon Salvatore taking liberal advantage of the man’s petite partner._

_Abandoning their slightly more bloodless partners and reconvening Claire laughed deep in her throat. Enjoying the hunt with him. Damon felt a thrill run through him. There was nothing like hunting and feeding in plain sight and then sharing that with someone while the people around you were heedless._

_“Again?” he asked her._

_“If you insist,” she teased._

_“Oh I do.”_

_By the time they had danced through the quick step, and the Charleston, Damon and Claire had worked their way through two more sets of hapless compelled to forget dancing partners who were now mysteriously jubilant, both of them sated and fat as ticks. Their victims perfectly fine if a bit confused and forgetful of their night. As Claire and Damon traded off again for each other the band changed the tempo drastically, dropping into a waltz. Someone declared last call._

_There was a wave of groans and protestations but there was naught to be had for it. The night was winding to an end. It was only a couple of hours until dawn and unlike him, neither Claire nor Vincent had the ability via a witch spelled ring to walk in the daylight. But Damon found himself not wanting the night to end. He had intended things to wrap up with him wrapped up in Claire…preferably in his bed…or hers. He wasn’t picky. But time was short and Damon was not a minute man. He preferred to take his time._

_It had been too long since he’d found pleasure in someone’s company that he hadn’t compelled or truly found interesting. Claire intrigued him, he wouldn’t mind a second night with her. It would be nice to have a casual lover that wasn’t compelled to be tolerable for a change._

_As they swayed around the dance floor, his arm rested around her, one hand in his._

_Claire gave a groan of discontent._

_“Where did the night go,” she complained lightly._

_“I think we spent it dancing and drinking,” Damon said._

_“So we did. And it was wonderful wasn’t it.”_

_“Yes, it was,” he said his voice sounding pleasantly surprised. He really had had a good time. More than a good time, he’d forgotten anything but the moment. “It’s been a while since I’ve lost track of time with someone,” Damon admitted._

_Claire chuckled lightly and smiled knowingly. Damon’s eyes widened in realization._

_“You did this on purpose,” he said. “You’ve been distracting me.”_

_“Don’t pretend you didn’t like it,” Claire said coquettishly._

_Damon pulled her closer in pretended fierceness. “You’re the one who was going to eat me. You started this.”_

_“I still might,” Claire growled. “But you’ll have to wait to find out.”_

_Damon gawked at her but he couldn’t help grinning too._ Minx _, he thought._

_“Alright folks, closing time,” the bartender called over the music and the band wound the song to its conclusion. As if he had been spirited there, Vincent appeared at Claire’s elbow. He had Damon’s hat in hand, his own already on his head._

_“I hope your evening was pleasant,” he said politely, he handed Damon his hat back._

_“Delightful,” Claire said._

_“Pleasant and infuriating,” Damon said as he offered Claire his arm to walk her out. Vincent laughed._

_“Claire has that effect on people. However, we should be getting home. Before Claire eats anyone else.”_

_Claire batted her eyelashes innocently. It was very believable with her soft features, her dark doe eyes. She looked completely harmless and pure as new driven snow. It was Damon’s turn to laugh._

_“We are attending the opera tomorrow night. If you care to we’d be more than happy to have you,” Vincent offered. For an instant Claire’s innocent act faltered and nervousness flickered there but it was gone so fast Damon wasn’t sure it hadn’t been a trick of the light as the bar tender started turning them off._

_Damon wasn’t much for the opera. Amphitheaters full of stuffy people listening to equally stuffy fat men in too small tuxedos warble pompously._

_“The opera is rather boring don’t you think?” he said. He would most certainly like to see Claire again but the opera? He wasn’t sure that was what he would have picked. Vincent grinned._

_“Not with Claire there it isn’t.”_

_“We shall see the opera and then we shall eat it,” Claire teased. Damon smiled, she was infectious. He couldn’t figure out why and somehow he had the feeling Vincent was telling the unvarnished truth. However boring the opera was, Claire would manage to make it anything but._

_“Alright,” he agreed._

_“Very good,” Vincent said happily. “We’re at 1911 Springfield St.  We’ll see you then. Black tie only.”_

_“I’ll come around about seven thirty,” Damon said as they broke through the press of people and onto the street._

_“I look forward to seeing you,” Claire said as Damon passed her off to Vincent who tucked her arm under his.  Damon inclined his head and watched them as they strolled away down the street. Claire cast a look back at him once, her eyes taking him in from head to toe hungrily. He gave her look for look. She turned back around and he let his gaze linger on the sway of her hips and the almost fatherly way that Vincent escorted her for a moment longer then set his hat on his head and went on his way._

_None of them noticed the tall, slender blonde young man in a gray suit and fedora who had followed them out of the Red Ivy, nor did they see the scathing looks he shot at them hot enough to scorch the sidewalk._

_***_

_Damon strolled up the narrow paved walkway of 1911 Springfield Street, toward the tan brick faced Colonial Revival style house at the end at promptly seven thirty the next evening. It was two stories with a bay window framed by a wealth of greenery and an arched canopy over the front door. Beneath it hung a glass porch lamp illuminating the wrought iron stair railing, a Chevrolet sedan was parked nearby. Damon stepped up onto the porch and rapped smartly on the door._

_The door was answered almost immediately by a well-built man with a thick head of chestnut hair._

_“May I help you?” he asked in a smooth tenor._

_Damon blinked once in confusion. He stepped back a pace and looked at the brass plate beside the door. It definitely said 1911 Springfield St.  “Damon Salvatore. I was expected,” he hazarded. Maybe the unknown man was a butler? He wasn’t dressed like a butler, he was dressed like a man casually lounging around his home of an evening. Button down with slacks and oxfords, a sweater vest pulled over the top. Damon stepped forward a bit, shifting his weight and felt the familiar pressure of the barrier present when a human who had not invited him in owned a home._

_“Oh, of course,” the man said cheerfully._

_Before he could say more Damon heard the distinct tap of hard heeled shoes on hard floors from somewhere behind the man at the door. “Invite him in Michael,” called Vincent’s voice._

_“Please, come in Mr. Salvatore,” Michael asked him, stepping aside.  Apparently, Michael owned the home for all intents and purposes. Damon realized what was going on. It was not uncommon—in fact it was something he and his brother had ensured years ago with their own family home in Mystic Falls Virginia-- to have a human residing in the same house as a vampire. The home was deeded to the human and thus no vampire who was not invited could enter. A vampire living alone had no such protection from others of their own kind. Whether the human in question was simply loyal or compelled, varied from one vampire to the next._

_“Thank you,” Damon said as he stepped freely across the threshold, careful to avoid hitting his top hat on the top of the doorframe._

_Vincent appeared in the foyer, the collar of his heavily starched tuxedo shirt open and his white silk bow tie hanging loose around his neck.  “Forgive me. I am running late again, as you can see,” he said buttoning his collar. He moved across the hall to a gold framed decorative mirror and peered into it to tie his bowtie._

_“Of course,” Damon said cordially_

_Vincent was a study in old world culture. While his attire was absolutely proper for the event, he looked like he should be wandering the streets of Paris with a half cape and a cane dressed as he was in a fitted tailcoat that was velvety black, patent leather opera slippers on his feet and a white waistcoat to match the white shirt and bowtie. A black top hat sat on the table beneath the mirror to go with it. Damon, in contrast, was in a midnight blue tuxedo, white shirt with a black waistcoat, black bow tie and wingtips with a matching black silk top hat._

_“Where’s Claire?” Damon asked curiously, looking around the foyer. It was decorated in sleek and luxurious art deco, purples and oranges blending with red and gold tied together by the paintings on the walls. But they weren’t the stylized geometric pieces favored of the art deco movement. They were landscapes mostly, all of them vibrantly colorful. But what struck him most was that every single one featured a sunset or a sunrise in it somewhere._

_“She will meet us at the theater,” Vincent said._

_“Oh, alright,” he agreed. He wondered why she wasn’t here and felt a twinge of disappointment. He would have liked to see her descend the staircase in all her finery._

_“Would you care for a drink while you wait?” Vincent asked pulling his bowtie snug._

_“No, I’m fine,” Damon said._

_“Or a bite?” Vincent added motioning to Michael. It took a beat for Damon to absorb that. Vincent was offering up Michael for a quick snack. Michael stood by unaffectedly waiting, eyes on Damon expectantly._

_“Compelled?” Damon asked._

_“Always,” Vincent said absently, moving away from the mirror and turning around in a circle in search of something. Michael moved then and pulled what Vincent was looking for from his coat pocket, a pair of white dress gloves.  He held them out to Vincent._

_“No thank you,” Damon said politely. He appreciated the offer but he preferred to hunt his own prey._

_“Thank you Michael. I’d lose my head if it weren’t for you,” Vincent said. He took the gloves and pulled them on._

_“Claire’s?” Damon assumed, motioning toward Michael. He didn’t seem her type Damon thought. He was quiet and reserved. A compelled human simply obeyed when compelled to, they didn’t lose their personality or their freewill while not under compulsion—though one could compel them not to have it unless told to--and Michael seemed all together too proper for Claire’s taste but he lacked the blank stare that came with being under constant compulsion. Vincent smiled cheekily._

_“Mine.”_

_Damon had to blink again. It was all he could do not to embarrass himself by muttering ‘Oh.’ Michael inclined his head toward him politely and smiled a bit, aware that Vincent had just surprised Damon._

_“Claire doesn’t keep a compelled companion. She grows bored of them quickly, finds them tedious and uninteresting,” Michael said as Vincent grabbed his top hat and gave himself a quick check._

_Damon nodded in understanding. He had kept a pet or two himself now and again, but currently he didn’t have one having only recently released the last one because he had grown tired of her._

_Satisfied with his appearance he said, “Shall we go? If we’re late Claire will have my hide tanned.”_

_“Or she’ll give your dinner away again,” Damon said jokingly._

_“To you no doubt,” Vincent said in retort. Michael preceded them to the door and saw them out._

_As they walked down the path toward the street, the residence was within walking distance of the theater, Damon changed the subject. “Beautiful home,” he complimented._

_“Thank you.”_

_“The paintings are interesting though.”_

_“Claire’s touch,” Vincent remarked idly. Damon nodded acceptingly  but it made him wonder. Such an odd choice._

_They stepped out onto the sidewalk and turned east. The moon was a sliver in the sky, the streets lit by the green streetlamps in neatly spaced pools of light. “She fancies you, you know,” Vincent said suddenly._

_“I like her too,” Damon said as they walked, Model T’s and Cadillac coupes taxied past. They could have driven to the theater but in the interest of speed, it was faster to walk. They would only get bogged down in traffic at the theater in a car and be forced to find a parking place._

_Damon knew Claire fancied him of course. There was no doubting that but Vincent’s words made him feel pleased for some reason._

_“Good,” Vincent said, his tone was growing progressively more serious and Damon glanced at him warily. Like her or not Damon didn’t have the patience for an over protective companion, not when there were plenty of willing women to choose from._

_“Is this where you tell me that if I hurt her you will rip my heart out?”_

_“Not at all. Claire is her own woman.  I assure you she is more than capable of doing that herself,” Vincent laughed. Damon arched a brow at him in amusement._

_“You’ve never seen her angry.”_

_“I’ll keep that in mind,” Damon said impishly as they reached Congress Parkway and hit a wall of noise and motion._

_Cars jostled for position horns honking at each other above the idling of engines and a throng of be-gowned women and tuxedoed men streamed between them heading to the huge arched doors of the Auditorium Building, which housed the Auditorium Theater, home to the Chicago Opera. The looming gray concrete building was a testament to human ingenuity with its late 19 th and early 20th century American design. When it had been erected in 1886, it had been the largest building in the country. Along with the 4300 seat auditorium, the building’s centerpiece, it also housed 136 offices and 400 hotel rooms. To say it was massive was an understatement. _

_There was little opportunity to talk further as they wove their way across the street and merged with the sea of people flowing through the doors into the theater. The press of the crowd didn’t thin until they were deposited in the entrance hall of the theater. Sumptuous rugs lay under their feet and the ceiling rose above them like a cathedral, hung with massive crystal chandeliers . A second set of doors lay beyond the first and was sectioned off into intake areas by brass posts and red velvet ropes on either side of the ticket booth where a few stragglers tried their best to obtain last minute admission._

_Vincent bustled them toward one of the shorter lines where a liveried ticket taker was smiling mechanically as he took patron’s tickets and  ripped them in two handing them back half._

_“Evening Robert,” Vincent  said as they reached the man. He held two tickets out to him._

_“Evening Mr. Addison. You’ve brought a guest tonight,” the ticket taker said cordially, nodding in polite acknowledgement to Damon. A gesture he returned. Ah social graces… well his upbringing had been worth something at least._

_“A ‘guest’. Hmph,” a man said from behind them with an overly affected French accent. “Riff raff picked up off the street no doubt. They’ll let anyone in here these days.”_

_“You would know wouldn’t you Mr. Perrin?” Vincent threw back over his shoulder as Damon turned and gave the man a hard predatory glare, he smiled like a lion about to pounce on a bleating gazelle. It was enough, Damon didn’t have to say a word. The man blinked and looked distinctly uncomfortable, his mouth snapped shut. The reedy woman on his arm with a hawk nose looked down right terrified. Damon smirked. The ticket taker took the tickets from Vincent and tore them in half giving him back his portion and then waved them through with an exaggerated gesture._

_A very stiff young man appeared out of nowhere from behind the ticket taker to intercept them as they passed through into the theater. “Mr. Addision, your box is waiting,” he said and then turned neatly on his heel to escort them formally. Behind them Damon could clearly hear the ticket taker._

_“I’m sorry Mr. Perrin but you’ll have to continue without your guest.”_

_“What do you mean? You let Vincent’s guest through!” Perrin squawked in outrage._

_“He was on the list. She isn’t.”_

_“You don’t even have a list!”_

_Damon chuckled._

_“I apologize,” Vincent said as they followed the usher through the extravagant auditorium done in cream and taupe accented in gold with a cathedral ceiling scaling down to a tiered Proscenium arch inset with lights before reaching a wide stage curtained off for the show that butted against the orchestra pit where they could hear the whine and twang as the orchestra tuned up for the concert. The quiet cacophony familiar to a theater filled the air, that constant loud whisper of sound that ran together until it was akin to the sound of ocean waves as the mannerly concert goers conversed among themselves. “Philippe Perrin is an insufferable..”_

_“Pompous ass?” Damon finished for him._

_“Indeed,” Vincent said. “No one likes him.”_

_“Philippe Perrin, he’s the one you were complaining to Claire about making you late last night. Something about trompe l’oeil?”_

_“Yes. That’s taken care of,” Vincent said smugly._

_Damon chuckled knowingly. Vincent had tired of playing by human rules and compelled the arrogant prig to do what he wanted anyway._

_“So you work here.”_

_“Yes, I’m the set designer. Philippe is the stage manager. So naturally we are always at odds,” Vincent said as they reached their box._

_The usher opened the door to a small private area ensconced on the second level of the auditorium with a excellent view of the stage. Four red velvet chairs awaited them along with a table stocked with a bucket of champagne and flutes and a silver tray of fancy hors d'oeuvres. A red velvet curtain draped around the exposed archway facing the stage and a prim girl stood to one side in the space waiting to serve them._

_“Enjoy the opera gentlemen,” the usher said as he passed them off to the girl. She smiled brightly as Damon and Vincent took a seat and got comfortable casting off hats and gloves.  She moved to pour the champagne for them, serving first Vincent then Damon who accepted politely._

_For a moment Damon felt like he had been flung backward in time with all the trappings of the opera house. He half expected his younger brother Stefan to come waltzing through the opera box’s door with Katherine on his arm in full 1864 regalia. Her looking kittenishly self satisfied and arrogant and Stefan smugly triumphant with Damon and Stefan’s father on their heels ready to tell Damon how very disappointing he was to his father._

_“May I do anything else for you?” the girl asked pulling him out of his moment of bitter nostalgia._

_“Oh I’m sure I could think of something,” Damon teased, lounging in his chair, the stem of his champagne flute turning in his fingers. The girl blushed deeply not missing the decidedly vulgar under current to his tone or the unwavering way his eyes took her in. His gaze lingered on the pulse of her throat briefly. Damon smiled devilishly, satisfied with her reaction but he refrained from following through on it. Manners after all._

_“That will be all, Dorothy,” Vincent excused the girl. It came as no surprise that he knew the girl’s name without asking since he worked at the theater._

_“Yes, sir,” she said and absented herself quietly. Once she was gone Vincent chuckled._

_“You, Damon, are a rake,” he joked._

_“So I’ve been told,” Damon laughed._

_“No wonder Claire fancies you.”_

_“Speaking of, where is she? If she doesn’t catch up to us soon they won’t let her in until after the overture at least,” Damon noted, peering over the balcony as if he might spot her among the crowd below them._

_“She will be along momentarily. This is a very important night for Claire,” Vincent said, his voice very serious again. Damon had a moment to curiously wonder what Vincent’s sudden somber tone meant but the crowd dropped into silence and the lights began to go down.  He held his tongue and turned his attention to the stage. The curtain rose lit only by a scattering of candelabras as the conductor entered the pit. Everyone, including Damon and Vincent ,applauded._

_The conductor nodded in appreciation and turned with a flick of his tailcoat to the orchestra that set ready and waiting, hands hovering over instruments expectantly as he raised his wand. Then without further ado he signaled them to play and simultaneously lights went on at the back of the stage casting a choir in its diffuse light keeping the fore in deep shadow as their voices rose in soft notes._

_As their voices thrummed, the front spotlight came on slowly as the featured singer of the piece was highlighted. Before they could be fully revealed the voice, an incredibly lovely coloratura mezzo-soprano, rose into the atmosphere to blend seamlessly with the violins. He could have easily seen what the singer hidden in the shadows looked like, vampire’s could  see perfectly in near complete darkness, but that would have destroyed the mystique the show meant to create. Sometimes there were reasons not to use one’s abilities but as the lights came up completely and Damon got a look he felt a very rare feeling. He felt utterly stunned._

_Claire stood on the stage in a mermaid style ball gown of heavily beaded and sequined gold, the train curving around her feet gracefully and a gossamer shawl draped from the fall of her arms.  Her raven dark hair was done in loose curls that wreathed her head softly and accented by a bejeweled star headband that fit closely to her head. She looked nothing like the seductive woman he had met last night at the Red Ivy now. Instead, she looked almost ethereal as her voice soared in Latin. She was singing ‘Ave Maria’._

_Damon gawked, his mouth part way open, ice blue eyes wide in surprise and completely unaware that he had leaned forward, one hand on the balcony rail and in serious danger of spilling his champagne flute. Vincent gave him a gratified and knowing smile._

_Silence reigned across the hall save for the orchestra and Claire’s velvety legato infused voice. When the aria came to an end, the lights faded gently, darkening the stage. The crowd started applauding as soon as the last note ceased to hang in the air and Damon was certain he was the loudest of them all._

_“Her voice is beautiful,” he breathed. Claire, an opera singer. He would never in a million years have considered the idea that the voice of an angel was hidden within the body of the vixen in a speakeasy._

_“It is,” Vincent said gravely. “It is what got her turned. This is the first time she has sung in twenty-two years.”_

_Damon blinked in confusion. “Her voice got her turned into a vampire?” He sat back in his chair and looked at Vincent questioningly._

_“In 1905 Claire was at the height of her career and the prized showpiece of the Columbus Opera in Georgia. People came from far and wide, from Washington to New Orleans, to see her perform at the Springer Opera House. It came as no surprise that she had a large following of admirers who loved to hear her sing. But one in particular stood out. A young man by the name of Alexander Favre,” Vincent said._

_Damon sat listening closely, completely ignoring the tenor who had taken the stage to sing ‘Celeste Aida’. Tonight was not so much the performance of a full opera as a collection of showcase pieces meant to show off the theater’s cast of singers it seemed._

_“An opera singer’s voice has its own life span. It peaks in their twenties and then begins to fade. Claire’s career would begin to falter soon. Alexander seemed to particularly lament the fact. Mourning the loss of such a perfect voice. He was completely enraptured by Claire. He never missed a performance, he sent her flowers at every show. He was wealthy, handsome and polite. Though Claire thought him a gentleman she wasn’t in the least bit interested in him and considered him nothing more than an avid lover of her singing._

_“But, even then, Claire was a wild thing. For all her parents trying they couldn’t tame her. She was their beloved only child but she refused to conform and be a proper lady. She was twenty-four and a spinster. They feared she would never marry so in an effort to make a match of them, they invited him to dinner,” Vincent explained._

_Damon felt something flicker in his chest, the allusion was simple enough.  Alexander had been a vampire and her parents had invited him into their home without ever being aware of it and by doing so given him carte blanche to do anything he liked. Once invited you can’t rescinded an invitation to a vampire._

_“Of course he was a perfect guest, speaking cordially and respectfully. By the end of the night they were certain he would be an excellent husband for their daughter. The night ended and he left. After they had all gone to their beds, Claire woke trying to breathe. Alexander had returned to the house and had a cloth soaked in chloroform over her mouth. She was unconscious in moments._

_“He took her to an old abandoned plantation in the country. When she woke, he forced her to drink his blood and then he drove a knife into her heart.  When she woke again she was in transition. He told her that now her voice would never tarnish, never fade. She would be young and beautiful forever. That he had given her a gift and that they would be together for eternity. That she belonged to him. A bird in a gilded cage._

_“Claire never had the opportunity to refuse the transition. He already had a girl there he had abducted for just the purpose. He ripped her open and when Claire refused to drink and complete the transition, he held her down and forced her, never explaining what was going on. She had no idea what he was, what he had made her. She was terrified of him and she hated him for what he had done.”_

_Damon felt a welter of fury rise in him and understanding. Hadn’t he been done the same way? Albeit he had known what he was to become, known how to fend for himself beforehand because of Katherine. But in the end he had died unexpectedly while trying to save her—shot by his own father along with the traitorous brother he had demanded help him, with Katherine’s blood in their system-- from the enraged horde that had taken her, vervained by his brother’s blood and muzzled like an animal, from Stefan’s bed by their father. His little brother had betrayed them both._

_Damon had known what Katherine was and loved her anyway. Stefan she had compelled not to fear her, because she favored him over Damon, though Stefan had not known he was compelled until his memories returned after transitioning. Despite promising Damon to keep Katherine’s secret, Stefan had told his father about the vampires in Mystic Falls under the guise of swaying him to a more tolerant way of thinking, even though Damon had begged him not to knowing their father would never understand, never accept a vampire no matter how much humanity they had. Stefan had given him his promise he wouldn’t tell. He had known how much Damon loved Katherine, had claimed he loved her too and still he had done it._

_Damon had woken and believed Katherine dead, burned in Fell’s Church along with the twenty six other vampires the horde had captured. Faced with life without her, despite the fact that she had chosen his brother over him but still professing she wanted Damon as well, he had chosen not to complete the transition, to let himself die still human, for if a human in transition to a vampire does not feed they never complete it, they die._

_Stefan had taken the choice from him, bringing him a barmaid and forcing him to drink from her. Stefan himself had already finished his transition by drinking from and killing their father. Damon hated Stefan for that, for forcing him to turn, for taking Katherine from him. He had vowed to make the rest of Stefan’s life an eternal misery because of it. He knew what it was like to never have a choice, he thought as Vincent continued on._

_“But he was obsessed and rabid with the fantasy he had created for himself, he didn’t think about leaving her alone to hunt for them both when she refused to. He honestly believed she would stay and be his vampire bride. The moment he left her alone, she fled. Of course, she ran home. What else is a young woman to do when she has been abducted by a monster and gotten loose?”_

_“Alexander was completely insane. Who in their right mind would ever turn someone like him?” Damon asked not expecting an answer as Vincent paused for breath._

_A vampire’s mental state, the emotions they felt while they were human became heightened when they turned. Hate turned to rage, love to epic love, depression to complete despair and slightly mental to stark raving mad. Whoever had turned him would have known that. More to the point Alexander, had he been sane, should have known Claire would hate him more fervently than she ever would have as a human for what he had done. On the stage, a soprano had taken over, singing ‘Der Holle Rache’. Damon barely registered it._

_“A fool,” Vincent said hotly in response to Damon and then went on. “For some reason, perhaps he was too devastated when he returned and found her gone to pursue, Alexander never tried to get her back, but it was too late. At first, her parents thought she had lost her mind, that she was hysterical, raving about vampires that no one believed in. They simply thought her sudden nocturnal habits were the result of her hysteria… until starving, she couldn’t control her bloodlust and killed the maid. She was caught red handed.”_

_“It’s always the maid,” Damon said with bitter humor._

_“They rejected her, horrified by what she was, called her a demon and tried to kill her. Betrayed and terrified she fled again, wandering aimlessly at first but eventually she made her way to Savannah._

_“That is where I found her seventeen years ago. She lived like an animal, a beggar skulking out a living in the back alleys of Savannah’s historic district and preying on anyone who happened by at the wrong time. She always killed her victims. I caught her in the middle of feeding, when she saw me she ran thinking I was human that I would tell the authorities. It’s a miracle she hadn’t been caught before then, she was all predatory instinct.”_

_“Claire is a ripper?” Damon asked astonished. It wasn’t that Damon was averse to killing for killing’s sake, he was a vampire after all, but a ‘ripper’ as they were called among the vampires was all the bad parts of being one and none of the good. They lived only for the hunt, for blood and took perverse pleasure in ripping their victims apart and torturing them. Rippers were the demented serial killers of vampire kind. Stefan, Damon’s younger brother was a shining example of one._

_“No,” Vincent said shaking his head. “Quite the opposite. She would stave off feeding until bloodlust over came her and then the first human she saw she would feed on, draining them completely. She hated what she was.”_

_Damon swallowed and nodded, indicating for him to go on. Claire had been in the no man’s land between what Stefan had become and what Damon had been. Damon had been close to the same thing. Morose and depressed after being forced to turn he had killed only as often as he had to, to survive but he had done so willingly, never recoiling from it though he had lacked any finesse or enjoyment in it. He was hungry, he hunted and then he was not hungry. It had been Sage, another vampire he had met in 1912, who had taught him how to truly be a vampire, to relish in the hunt, to make it fun and enjoy what he was without killing. She had taught him that humans were not just food._

_“Why didn’t she turn off her humanity?” Damon wondered while at the same time his subconscious asked, ‘Why didn’t you?’ It was the unique ability of a vampire to switch off their capacity to feel when the torment of their existence got to be too much.  They could switch it off with a thought, switching it back on was a tad more difficult since it was a vampire’s instinct not to feel. The release switching it off offered was wondrous, to never feel guilt or grief, never be afraid, never feel pain. Stefan had flipped his switch. All that remained was the pleasure of the hunt, of the kill, of the blood._

_“I don’t know,” Vincent admitted. “I doubt there would have been any saving her if she had. She’d have been a full blown ripper. Like your brother.”_

_Damon shot Vincent a sharp look. Vincent smiled._

_“How many vampires with the last name Salvatore can there be?” he said. Of course, Stefan was well known as the Ripper of Monterey among vampires everywhere for having decimated an entire village of immigrants in 1917. It really shouldn’t have shocked Damon that Vincent had pieced two and two together and realized that Stefan was Damon’s brother.  “Have no fear, I don’t judge you based on your brother’s actions,” he assured Damon._

_“Thank you,” Damon said. “I wondered how you two had met. Claire is so different from you. You’re reserved and she’s…” Damon paused to find a word to describe her._

_“Untamed?” Vincent suggested._

_“Free,” Damon corrected._

_“Perhaps,” Vincent said of his and Claire’s companionship, “she reminded me of my daughter. And perhaps I reminded Claire of the father who doted on her lovingly before she became a vampire, before he cast her off and betrayed her.” He withdrew a pocket watch from his coat and opened it. A small portrait was on the inside, like a locket, of a little girl perhaps ten years old with thick dark hair and Vincent’s eyes._

_Vincent grinned at Damon’s surprised expression. “Even a man like me can have children Mr. Salvatore. It was a marriage of convenience meant only to satisfy the social obligations we both had, but I loved my daughter. She was my light. I lost her to the plague in 1665, before I was turned.”_

_“My condolences,” Damon said then shook his head. “It’s hard to imagine Claire was as you say she was.” At some point the soprano had given over the stage to a baritone who was passionately singing ‘Song of the Venetian Guest’ with aplomb but Damon tuned it out in favor of Vincent._

_“She was. I took her in. Taught her to embrace what she was, to enjoy it. Eventually, who she had been resurfaced. As you know, who we were as humans is amplified when we turn our personalities become extreme versions of what they once were. The unconventional hardheaded debutante became an independent free-spirit. But since her voice was the catalyst to being turned, she refused to ever sing again. As if doing so would somehow ensure some tragedy. This was the final step to returning her to herself. It has taken a long time to get her to this point,” Vincent said, gazing at the portrait in his watch wistfully a moment before returning it to his pocket._

_“You deliberately neglected to mention the fact Claire was in this opera. You wanted to surprise me with that. Why are you doing this, telling me this?” Damon asked._

_Vincent looked at him very seriously for a moment and then his face softened into a smile. “Perhaps I like what I see in you.”_

_“And what do you see in me?” Damon prodded. He didn’t understand Vincent’s reasoning. Damon was nothing of particular note. He was a hedonistic vampire who reveled in what he was with no regard for anyone else. Damon took what he wanted from whomever he wanted. He was not good. Not like his brother pretended to be with his animal blood and his sanctification of humanity, that is until he fell off the wagon and went into ripper mode, revealing what really lay beneath his saintly façade. Damon didn’t pretend. He was what he was._

_Stefan was why Damon was in Chicago in the first place, though he had been very careful to avoid Stefan knowing he was here. Stefan had come here in 1922 on one of his famed ripper sprees partying and dismembering his way through Chicago wantonly. Damon had been curious to know if there was any humanity left in his brother but he had found none. His brother loved what he had become so much he kept a list of names of the people he had killed so he could relive each one, over and over again.  Stefan had left Chicago a while ago though and Damon wasn’t quite sure why he had stayed after he had left for other hunting grounds. Apathy maybe._

_Despite Damon’s hate of his little brother, there was still some part of him that cared. Some part that wanted back the best friend and the brother he had known before Stefan had betrayed him, before he had taken Katherine from him. Yet his hate for him, the pain of his brother’s betrayal, kept him from interceding, from trying to stop Stefan from killing with callous abandon. Because Damon knew that despite what Stefan had done, despite what he was, once he had been human. He had been his brother. In its way didn’t that make him as guilty as Stefan? To let him be what he was when Damon might have been able to stop him?_

_But Damon’s hate and pain ran too deep. Let his brother be what he was. Let him kill and torture, let him give himself over to the uncontrollable bloodlust and perverse love of causing someone else pain. One day Lexi would find him again and put him back on the wagon and then Stefan would hate himself for what he had done, just like he always did.  Let him hate himself for it, let him hurt as badly as Damon had. Damon didn’t care anymore._

_“You are here, aren’t you?” Vincent said confusing Damon further but as if he had planned it that way and Damon was beginning to suspect Vincent had orchestrated this whole night very carefully, so he probably had…he motioned over the balcony to the stage. The soprano from before entered the stage from one side, a blonde in a white satin gown. From the opposite side Claire came, in step with the other woman as the orchestra began to play the first strains of ‘The Flower Duet’ from ‘[Lakmé](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakm%C3%A9)’. Damon sat motionless, watching and listening as the two floated around the stage in ephemeral duet. _

_The song was about two women, the daughter of a Brahmin priest and her maid going to the river and then along its course to a pond to pick flowers from the bank in the morning. There was something exquisitely tragic about hearing Claire’s voice raised in exultation of picking lotus flowers and jasmine under the morning sun while swans played on the pond. She couldn’t. Never again would she see the sun. The moment Alexander had turned her he had made her a slave to the dark._

_Perhaps that was why Claire had chosen the paintings Damon had seen, they were as close as she would ever again come to sunlight. He looked down at the large lapis lazuli ring bearing his family crest with his first initial embossed upon it on his left hand. It was a daylight ring, spelled by the witch Emily Bennett at Katherine’s request—she had always intended to turn him and his brother at some point--before Katherine had been taken by his father. Stefan had one just like it with his initial. They allowed the Salvatore brothers to walk in daylight, to ignore the deadly sun and live, as much as they could, as they had when they had been human. He had never lost the sun despite what he was._

_The rings were rare and worked only on the vampire to which they were given. Katherine had arranged for all the vampires in Mystic Falls to have them but as far as Damon knew those were the only ones to exist and they took a lot of power to make. Finding a witch with the ability and the knowledge of the spell to make one was impossible. Emily Bennett had been burned at the stake years ago for her involvement with Katherine and she had taken the secret to the daylight rings with her._

_‘Ave Maria’ was a poignant choice as well in retrospect. For all its beauty it was a Catholic prayer set to music begging for the mercy of the virgin Mary at the hour of someone’s death. No one had shown Claire mercy when she had died and risen a vampire through no choice of her own. Not even her previously loving parents._

_And yet, Claire was now a fun loving and carefree creature that was at ease with what she was, seemingly untouched by her past. But was she? Was some lingering guilt and remorse for being a vampire why she so fiercely ensured those she fed on left her feeling jubilant? Was she trying to make amends in her own way? Was that really why she didn’t keep a compelled companion?  Or was Damon making things more complicated than they were? As he watched her sing, he wondered at the dichotomy that was Claire and his interest in her grew._

_***_

_After the baritone and the tenor had their duet and the crowd began to filter out, Vincent escorted Damon back stage, taking him through the crowded chaos that was the inner workings of an opera theater. They wound their way through stagehands and arguing musicians to a staircase that lead to a carpeted landing, the walkway bordered by brass rails that led toward the singers’ dressing rooms._

_As they made their way toward what Damon supposed was Claire’s dressing room, Philippe Perrin, the stage director, came stalking from the opposite direction beady eyes blazing with anger as he blew past them. Damon eyed him with dark amusement. Something still had the uppity Frenchman’s knickers in a twist._

_Vincent knocked softly on one of the plain white doors lining the hall with a brass number four on it. He opened it without waiting for a response. It wasn’t immediately evident they had the right room until Claire’s head appeared over the top of a dressing screen in the corner._

_“There you two are,” Claire said cheerily. “I was beginning to think you would miss all the fun.” She hastily tossed the last vestiges of her ball gown over the top, slinking into something more comfortable._

_“So the vixen is a song bird too,” Damon said. Claire looked at him over the screen and made a noncommittal noise in response._

_“Don’t be modest dear. It doesn’t become you,” Vincent admonished lightly._

_“You’re the one always telling me I’m an incorrigible creature,” Claire countered._

_“And so you are,” Vincent admitted._

_Despite the fact that she was hidden from view behind the screen except for the top of her head, Damon couldn’t help leering as if he could see through it. She noticed._

_Like what you don’t see?” she teased._

_Damon played the game with her happily, “My imagination can fill in the blanks nicely.”_

_Claire stepped from behind the screen and grinned coquettishly at him. What she had changed into was still formal but for convenience’s sake it was simple gold satin matching what she had been wearing on stage. Enabling her to trade her tight intricate mermaid ball gown for a more practical looser bodiced fishtail evening dress that fell to just below the knees in front and brushed her ankles in the back with a draped neckline leaving her back mostly bare and not requiring her to change her jewelry and headdress as well._

_“Hm, can it now?” she said as she walked over to a small table and poured herself a drink. Damon nearly choked on the price tag that went with it. She was drinking cuvee, a very expensive brandy._

_“I thought you favored Wild Turkey?”_

_“Second favorite,” she said. “Care for one?” She looked at them both expectantly. They both nodded in the affirmative and she poured two more, then took the bottle to the wall pressing on one of the wood panels. It popped open revealing a hidden cabinet where she stashed the cuvee. Prohibition required that anyone with enough brass to drink did so in secret and hid their trove lest the authorities catch them and arrest them. Then she picked up their drinks and handed them to them before taking up her own and sipping._

_To an outsider it would seem as if they drank far too much but alcohol for a vampire wasn’t just a vice, it took the edge off the craving for blood. It made for a lot of lush vampires. Prohibition was a real pain in a vampire’s ass._

_A sudden awkward silence grew as Damon found himself abruptly feeling uncharacteristically bashful. Because of Vincent, he knew things about Claire she had no idea he knew and somehow it made him feel like he had read her diary without her knowledge. Which really, was something Damon would do. And then use liberally to his advantage. He had absolutely no shame but here he was feeling awkward. It didn’t make sense. He cleared his throat, Damon didn’t feel shame or shyness. Damon was a lady’s man and knew it._

_“You sounded beautiful tonight. I had no idea,” he said. It came out sounding decidedly less smooth than he had been planning. What the hell was wrong with him? Suave, debonair damn it. Not boyish and awkward._

_“Most didn’t. Thank you,” she said. There was that awkward moment again only this time it was her. Her gaze flicked down to lose itself in her glass Vincent saved them._

_“What was that about almost missing all the fun?”_

_Claire looked up from her glass and was once again the coy fox she had been. She smiled mischievously. “You’ll see.”_

_“What have you done now?” Vincent asked jokingly with the air of someone who couldn’t have been angry with her no matter what she had done. The doting father figure and his spoiled daughter. Damon suspected anything Claire wanted, she got._

_“Nothing,” Claire said innocently. She moved away from Damon to fetch her shawl, tossing it around her with a playfully haughty air and plopping down on the Victorian couch the room sported. Damon was relieved for the change in topic. He took a moment to compose himself by looking around the room._

_It was larger than he had thought it would be. Besides the couch, a makeup-strewn vanity set in the corner across from the dressing screen. There was a clothing rack that had so many brightly spangled costumes hung on it that he had a hard time discerning one from the other. The small table Claire had had the cuvee and glasses on was slightly off center to the rest of the room and the dainty looking chairs that went with it were up against the wall next to the door. The couch was on the other side of the room and a table behind it sported a phonograph and a Harko radio. Every available surface was covered in vases full of flowers, primarily roses. Damon felt a twinge of irritation at Vincent for that, had he not kept the fact that Claire was in the opera a secret, Damon would have been able to follow protocol and send her flowers along with everyone else._

_As Damon took the room in he caught the whispered conversation Vincent and Claire had, his enhanced hearing picking it up without even trying. Vincent leaned close to her, one hand touching her arm supportively._

_“How are you feeling?” he asked with concern._

_“I feel fine,” Claire said irreverently._

_“Don’t be so flippant. This is an important occasion. You haven’t sung in twenty-two years. We both know what it means to you,” Vincent scolded gently._

_“Yes, it has been. I feel liberated, actually. So shouldn’t we have a party and celebrate instead of being maudlin?” Claire insisted. She was actively avoiding the topic like the plague. Vincent sighed._

_“What about the flowers? Do you want me to have them removed?” he asked. Now Claire sighed._

_“They’re fine. I’m fine. People are going to send them. It’s part of the whole scene.”_

_As Damon listened, though he pretended he wasn’t out of courtesy, he lost a bit of his irritation with Vincent realizing something. Alexander had made a habit of sending flowers to all her performances. Claire must hate them and it would have won Damon no points to have given them to her even innocently, they would have reminded her of someone she despised._

_Vincent seemed undecided a moment but then nodded once just as a knock sounded on the door._

_“Speaking of celebrating, there’s the party,” Claire piped, hopping up in a girlish manner. She bounded past Damon to answer the knock. When she opened the door she was met by a herd of people, which she motioned in animatedly, naming them off as they entered._

_“Violet,” she named the blonde soprano from earlier._

_“Henry,” she said of the baritone._

_“I brought the champagne,” Henry said waving a green glass bottle in the air enthusiastically._

_“Oh, excellent,” Claire exclaimed, then pointed to the next person._

_“George,” Claire named the tenor, who shot a glare at Henry and then cast a longing glance at Claire. Damon noted it and smirked. This could get interesting in a hurry._

_“John,” she dubbed the conductor of the orchestra who slid in past George, who was still glaring at an oblivious Henry’s back._

_“And the violinists Vera and Doris,” Claire finished up as the last two people moved into the room. She shut the door behind them as Vincent and Damon cordially said their hellos. Claire waved at Vincent._

_“You all already know Vincent,” she said. He raised his glass in humble acknowledgement. Claire slipped to Damon’s side and twined one arm around his back. Damon felt a little thrill go through him when she touched him. He wrapped his free arm around her waist and pulled her a little closer looking down at her hungrily._

_“And this is Damon. He’ll be joining us for the festivities,” Claire said. She was all kinetic energy and jubilation, a loaded spring waiting to be released. Violet, the blonde soprano strolled forward and extended her hand to Damon._

_“Enchanté,” she said batting her lashes at him. Damon took it and kissed it and the woman colored prettily._

_“I’m sure,” he said and looked at Claire who didn’t show the least bit of jealousy, instead she was grinning like a she-devil. Damon grinned back knowingly. Dinner was served._

_The unmistakable sound of mass laughter echoed into the room from beyond it and Claire’s smile turned positively wicked._

_“And the entertainment has started,” Claire said sliding her arm from behind Damon and taking his hand. She plucked the champagne bottle from Henry’s fingers as she skipped for the door, Damon in tow, and pushed it open. The other’s darted out past her to see what was going on save Vincent, as she suddenly stalled. She was looking at one of the table’s little chairs, the one nearest the door. A bouquet of blood red roses was laid on the seat, wrapped in white tissue paper. The color wasn’t unique, there were several other bouquets just like it scattered around the room amid a kaleidoscope of white, burgundy and pink ones._

_“Were those there earlier?” she asked Vincent._

_“I don’t know, love,” Vincent said. “I didn’t see the others brought in either. I was elsewhere, remember?”_

_Claire, her other hand still in Damon’s reached hesitantly forward and moved the wrapping aside looking for a card from the sender but there wasn’t one. She shrugged a bit. Outside the room, Damon heard Violet exclaim and then the sound of raucous laughter from the others. Something had tickled them._

_“One of the stage hands must have left them there, ran out of vases to put them in,” Claire said dismissively, anxious to join the others. With that she was out the door, Damon trotting on her heels as she pulled him toward the banister where the others were laughing hysterically. Vincent followed behind at a more languid pace._

_Damon and Vincent looked down in shock. They were high up; the hall gave an overhead view of the stage far below them._

_What was left of the opera crowd was standing scattered among the seats and laughing themselves sick. Philippe Perrin was on the stage in a woman’s frilly white and pink calico dress…singing ‘I’m a Little Tea Pot’ complete with demonstrative dance to the audience’s utter hysterical amusement._

_“Lord have mercy!” exclaimed Doris one hand to her breast in surprise._

_“Philippe has flipped,” declared a snickering George. The rest were staring in shock and amusement unable to say anything at all because they were in stitches. Claire was laughing._

_“Claire,” Vincent decried in a sharp voice of disapproval. Claire had compelled Philippe. That was why he had stalked by them earlier looking furious. He knew what he was going to do, he knew he was going to embarrass himself and there was nothing he could do about it. He had to do it. She’d taken revenge on him for the irritation he had caused Vincent in a perversely humorous way. Claire shrugged. Vincent shook his head, a smile creeping over his face despite himself._

_Damon said nothing he was too busy dying laughing. The others began to laugh harder, unable to deny the hilarity of Philippe dancing around like a fool below them. Claire was something else, he thought as she popped the top on the champagne bottle sending a stream of it bubbling and frothing over her hand and onto the floor._

_“Let the fun begin,” she proclaimed._

_***_

_It was four in the morning again, the moon had long since set and the only light they had as Damon and Claire stumbled through the mostly empty Chicago streets was cast by the gas lamp street lights. The few people they did see paid them no notice at all, choosing to ignore the wobbling entourage of drunken revelers. They were both a bit tipsy. On alcohol and blood.  Beside them, Vincent strolled equally sated but a good deal more sober._

_Some way behind them the humans stumbled in a knot of rowdy and soused laughter, hanging on each other to keep from ending up eating pavement, oblivious to the bites they sported. Claire had done it again. Vincent had been right. No one left a party Claire threw less than ecstatic._

_Damon was in high spirits. The night had been an overwhelming success, full of dancing, drinking, feeding and decidedly less than proper behavior. He laughed as he capered along, Claire’s arm around him and his around her. She was laughing just as much._

_“I still can’t believe Violet actually got on a table and danced with a lampshade on her head, naked and no one had to compel her!” he said.  He stumbled sideways and Claire stumbled with him but they stayed upright. Some of the buzz would wear off on the walk home but just at the moment Damon was having a problem walking in a straight line. If a cop saw them, he’d have to compel them to go away, assuming he could do it without laughing. Then again…he could just eat them._

_“Little known fact, two glasses of champagne and Violet’s clothes fall off,” Claire chuckled. She had taken her shoes off and was walking barefoot, the heel straps held in her free hand as they walked._

_“No kidding,” Damon laughed. Henry stumbled into them both almost making them topple over._

_“Sorry!” Henry called trotting on along and overtaking them. Claire was laughing at him. Vincent had stopped to wait for them to catch up._

_Damon sent an irritated glare after Henry, smoothing his coat absently and felt a flat space where his wallet should be. He automatically looked around for it. He saw it faintly, aided by a vampire’s enhanced ability to see in the dark. He’d dropped it a few yards back. He grumbled under his breath._

_“Be right back,” he said. “I dropped my wallet.”_

_Claire waited for him, but he waved her on._

_“Go on. I’ll catch up.”_

_Claire trotted after Vincent who caught her under his arm as she gamboled alongside, chatting animatedly and walking slowly so he wouldn’t have far to catch up to them. Their party companions were so far ahead of them now that there was little point in trying to rejoin them. They’d no doubt find something else to go do once they realized they had lost part of their group. They were all headed home anyway._

_Damon bent and retrieved his wallet but as he stood up a passing man with blonde hair clipped him, shoving him backward a pace. “Watch it buddy,” Damon bit. The man said nothing he just glared angrily for an instant at Damon before going on, as if the collision had been Damon’s fault. Damon’s brow furrowed at the rude man. He kept going without even an ‘excuse me.’_

_“You’re excused!” Damon yelled after him. The man didn’t look back as he turned a corner and disappeared. Damon let it go. On any other night he would have gone after him and made him apologize… before he ate him.  But tonight he had far more entertaining ventures to pursue. Claire and Vincent stopped and looked back curiously as Damon caught up to them  with enhanced speed after a quick glance to be sure no one would see._

_“Everything okay?” Vincent asked._

_Damon waved his hand dismissing it and wrapped an arm around Claire as they resumed their walk home._

_“Just some lout with no manners.”_

_***_

_When they finally arrived back at 1911 Springfield Street some of the edge had worn off the alcohol and blood intoxication but somehow Damon still felt drunk…or high. He really wasn’t sure which anymore._

_Vincent preceded them and the porch light came on, illuminating the small space. Michael answered the door. Damon still had his arm around Claire as Vincent cast a glance back over his shoulder at them, he eyed them both up and down a second with the hint of a droll grin on his lips._

_“Well, it was a pleasure spending the evening with you, Damon. I hope we can do it again sometime,” he said cordially._

_“It would be my pleasure,” Damon said._

_Vincent looked like he wanted to say something decidedly facetious but somehow managed to curb his tongue, his eyes were alight with merry amusement from some reason. Damon decided it was all the blood they had consumed._

_“I think I’ll retire early and let you two say your good nights,” Vincent said. He went inside, Michael giving them both a cockeyed glance as he shut the door._

_“Come along. Michael,” Vincent’s voice called from inside._

_“If I didn’t know better, I’d think Vincent was trying to throw me at you,” Claire said teasingly._

_“I wouldn’t mind you being thrown at me,” Damon observed salaciously._

_“Is that so?” Claire said, turning so she was pressed against him, she was playing with his lapels. Damon knew a pseudo-invitation when he heard one. He lowered his head a bit, biting his lip and Claire tilted her head back, her lips parted tantalizingly. They were a hair’s breadth from each other, mouths hovering close together, taunting each other._

_“Mhm,” Damon said, inching closer._

_“You know, this is where I should say good night,” Claire said._

_“If you were a proper lady,” Damon muttered. The tension between them was palatable._

_“If I were a proper lady,” she agreed. He could almost taste her lips on his. Teasing minx._

_Suddenly she started to pull away with a devilish grin. “Goodni--,” she started to say but he wasn’t letting her get away tonight. He pulled her back and tripped over his own feet. Claire gave a yip of surprise and then laughed as he nearly made them both fall. He caught himself just in time tightening his grip around Claire’s waist and swinging her back on her feet. He held her there a moment, his arms both around her, caught in his embrace._

_“You sir are drunk,” Claire teased._

_“And it’s all your fault,” Damon teased back._

_“Oh no. Don’t blame me for your inebriation,” Claire said but she was smiling._

_“Why not? I’m drunk on you,” Damon said. He was definitely still drunk. He had to be to say something that cliché and sappy. But Claire was giving him an altogether different sort of smile as they stood there under the street lights._

_“Really?” Claire said her voice taking on a warm smooth quality._

_“Really,” Damon said in return, ice blue eyes flicking over her.  His head dipped to kiss her and he found her teasing stopped; she became pliant in his arms. No more teasing, she was his for the taking. He captured her lips with his firmly and she melted against him. Damon moaned at the taste of her lips, his tongue sweeping against hers with barely checked desire, his hands running over her back possessively._

_Claire clutched at his shoulders, dropping her shoes with a clatter onto the ground and Damon forewent the pretense of a long good night kiss, his hands burying themselves in her soft hair and pressing her back with a vampire’s speed against the front door with a quiet thud. She made a delightedly surprised noise deep in her throat that both made Damon’s blood run hotter and made him curiously wonder why she had made it. As if she didn’t know what was going to happen._

_Since a vampire’s emotions and feelings were heightened, sexual attraction quickly turned to burning desire. There weren’t many extended chaste courtships between two willing vampires. Why abstain when you both wanted it? And right now Damon wanted Claire and she wanted him. He had the vague realization that he had no idea where the nearest bed was and that while delightfully sinful the front porch wasn’t exactly the best place to consummate things._

_But Claire seemed to be as hungry for him as he was for her. She fumbled for the door knob as  Damon moved from her lips to her throat . He felt her gasp vibrate against his lips as she managed to get the knob to turn and the door gave. He buried his hands in her hair again and devoured her mouth and her hands found his head, threading into his black hair wantonly. Claire  pulled back just enough she could speak, her voice husky._

_“Have you been invi--,” she began. Damon answered her by pushing her over the threshold and trapping her mouth with his. With another burst speed he slammed the door shut and had her pinned to the foyer wall as he kissed his way down her throat to her chest. Her hands were all over him and eagerly trying to peel his coat off. He obliged her and moved his arms so it dropped, though he didn’t understand why she wasn’t divesting him of his clothes herself. One of the benefits of being a vampire… getting undressed when you wanted your clothes off in a hurry was no problem.. for you or your partner. He buried his mouth in the hollow of her throat working his way back up as she writhed against the wall and  him. His body burned with need. Oh he wanted her. Something about her was magnetizing. She drew him like a moth to a flame, that should have made him wary of getting burned but right now he didn’t care. He wanted what he wanted._

_“Bed?” he muttered, his mouth never ceasing to explore her throat, her mouth. He almost instantly undid her dress and shoved it so it would drop to pool at her feet, revealing a filmy brief silk slip beneath._

_“Stairs,” she breathed. She had her fingers working the buttons of his waistcoat loose. He let her, still curious why she didn’t just let herself go. Damon cast a glance in the direction of the staircase and took matters into his own hands, zipping them halfway up the staircase before the need to stop and touch her, run his hands over her body in that sinfully thin slip consumed him. He couldn’t stop touching her and the way her lips found the sweet spot just beneath his ear made him growl._

_He pushed her against the wall again, her leg hooked over his hip and held there with one hand. She had his head cupped in her hands pulling his mouth back to hers so she could invade it with her tongue hotly. He let her, then moved to her neck kissing and biting gently. She moaned with such fervor Damon almost took her then and there. The familiar ache and throb started in his upper jaw, the desire to let his fangs come out and sink them into the tender flesh of her throat, taste her blood but he resisted it._

_It was something that happened to all vampires when they were aroused. The natural need to feed was tied to arousal of any kind, anger or passion. But blood sharing was intimate, something done only with another vampire you were in a relationship with. Feeding on a human partner was one thing; blood sharing was an expression of the bond between two romantically involved vampires. It fell where lovemaking did in the human world. Sex wasn’t a big deal between unattached vampires, blood sharing was. It didn’t stop the physical desire however and he knew Claire felt it as urgently as he did. It was in their nature, imbedded so deeply it was instinctual. Hunt, feed, kill._

_He had thought she would be more aggressive, seductive as she was to the point of being almost hypnotizing. He wanted her desperately right now. She hunted and fed without flinching, why didn’t she take what she wanted from him? She was almost treating him like he was made of glass by vampire standards._

_“Afraid you’ll break me?” he whisper in her ear. He looked at her, pinned to the wall, and grinned teasingly. She looked him up and down once and then a feral grin spread over her lips that made him harden and throb. She let loose. She had them flipped around with him pinned to the wall in her place so quickly Damon’s head spun. She ripped his shirt open, hands sliding over his bare chest as if she’d just realized she didn’t need to hold back._ Curious _, Damon thought but just now her hands had found his belt  and her teeth had found his neck, biting as gently as he had a mimic of the real thing. Damon groaned with pleasure and he forgot to wonder anymore consumed with the feel of her hands on his skin._

_From there Claire had him through the door of her bedroom, a sumptuous velvet and satin creation in shades of burgundy and gold, in short order. They had left a trail of clothing behind them and Damon wasn’t sure who was taking who anymore._ That’s more like it _, he thought pleased._

_The bed was a satin quilted confection on a raised platform at the center of the room. With a burst of speed he picked Claire up effortlessly and threw her in it, descending on her like the predator he was. She rose against him, her legs kicking playfully as she giggled with wanton abandon that didn’t disguise the fact she was as predatory as he was. Damon laughed and they disappeared into the plush quilted bed._

_***_

_Later, Damon lay on his back in Claire’s bed, her curled against him, head on his chest and arm across his abdomen as he languidly stroked his fingers up and down her upper back. He was spent. Once Claire had let go… she had let go completely and he had found her as wild and carefree in the bedroom as she was outside it to his delight. His head was propped on the thick satin covered pillows, tousled hair in disarray as he let his mind blissfully drift in the afterglow._

_The room was fairly typical of the times. One wall had a built in vanity cluttered with all the accoutrements of a woman’s beauty routine. So Claire was a vain beast. So was he. There was the bed with its matching side tables and fringed lamps but what was particular about the room were the windows. Floor to ceiling, they were the many paned French style so popular now spanning the breadth of one wall completely with two of them doubling as doors to a balcony outside. Of course, Claire being a vampire, they were covered in heavy drapes to block out the sun which had risen sometime ago behind the thick fabric. Not a shred of light crept across the wall to wall carpet. Why choose this room as her boudoir when she couldn’t enjoy the sun those windows were meant to allow in?_

_His gaze gravitated to one of the paintings on the wall, sunrises and sunsets just like down stairs. The one nearest him was interesting. It was done in such as way that the viewer felt as if they were standing in the shadows of a Southern Live Oak and Loblolly Pine grove that let out on a meadow as the sun rose over the horizon in the distance, watching from the darkened safety of the trees._

_He considered asking her why she had the paintings everywhere to satisfy his curiosity but he knew they weren’t to that point yet. Sex certainly, but revealing questions that he suspected delved into private places, no.  He didn’t want to push her away by asking too soon. Damon wasn’t interested in a deep relationship with Claire but she intrigued him and Damon’s curiosity had a habit of getting the better of him. He wouldn’t be able to let go until he had satisfied it. Or so he told himself._

_He glanced around and his eyes fell on a down turned book on one of the side tables, marking the last place Claire had left off. It was Pride and Prejudice. That was a curious choice. Curious…that was becoming his word for Claire. She was an enticing little curiosity. Had she been that intriguing when she’d been human? Was that why Alexander had found himself obsessed with her? If so, why hadn’t he just compelled her? A hedonist like Claire reading Pride and Prejudice._

_On the surface, it was a Novel of Manners and a satire but interwoven with all the rest was the enduring love story of Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Two people from different social classes certainly never destined to be together. She was the daughter of a middle class gentlemen that was in danger of going bankrupt and the untamed way she and her sisters had been raised boded ill for them ever finding husbands and obtaining their family financial security. He had been an aristocrat who thought her beneath him, disgusted by her family’s manners and means. They had hated each other. Yet in the end they fell in love and eventually married. It was all very romantic._

_He reached for the book, curiosity making him wonder where she had stopped reading last when Claire shifted and began to kiss her way up his chest slowly. Damon felt a jolt pass down his spine of renewed lust. He groaned, moving beneath her ministrations. He considered dissuading her from it. He wasn’t going to get answers if he ended up wanting to take her all over again. Not that he wouldn’t like to repeat earlier. But he wanted some satiation of his curiosity._

_He pulled the book toward him with his fingertips and looked it over as she worked her way up his throat. “Pride and Prejudice? Little on the romantic side for a hedonist like you isn’t it?” he asked. She stopped, letting her weight rest on his chest, naked as she was beneath the satin bedspread it did nothing to dampen the welter of heat that rose in him again._

_“Is it? Hedonism is about pleasure. Isn’t love pleasure?” she said with an impish grin. Damon’s brow furrowed. That was a curious answer and there was that word again. She resumed licking and sucking her way over his collarbone, lips caressing over his jugular teasingly. He felt her teeth nip softly and he moaned._

_“Insatiable beast,” he said huskily._

_“Always,” she whispered and plied him with a deep kiss that took his breath, trying to incite him all over again. It was working and she was trying to distract him.  He caught her head and pulled her back so he could look in her eyes, searching for her to say something that wasn’t a deflection. He should know one when he heard one, he had invented it._

_“Why did you hold back before?” he asked. There was another thing he wanted an answer to. So many questions, no answers, yet. He was going to have an answer to something.  Her hair had lost its careful curls and now it fell through his fingers in soft natural waves that begged to be stroked.  He indulged himself and let her hair slide through his fingers as she looked down at him. She flushed pink. He’d embarrassed her. He hadn’t thought she could be embarrassed. That amused him for some reason. He’d managed to make her blush without trying._

_“You were right,” she said in a hushed voice._

_“You were afraid you’d break me?” he said befuddled. He had meant that as a tease not seriously. He chuckled. “Did you forget we’re both vampires?” She looked away, flushing a deeper shade of pink. Then it hit him and his head tilted as his mouth broaden in a self-satisfied smile._

_“You’ve never been with another vampire have you?”_

_He had forgotten how young she was relatively speaking. She had been twenty-five--albeit a young twenty-five. He wouldn’t have pegged her to be older than twenty at the most-- when she had been turned. That had been twenty-two years ago. 1905. She was only forty-seven. She was still in her natural lifetime. The parents who had rejected her and tried to kill her were most likely still alive. All those she had grown up with in their middle age. She wouldn’t have been with Vincent since his predilections ran in the other direction but surely Damon wasn’t the only vampire they had run into in twenty two years. Vampires weren’t exactly a populous breed but they weren’t that rare either and Vincent had to have other vampire friends that visited from time to time._

_Damon was just barely still within his own at eighty-five, if he’d been lucky. Everyone he had known as a human was dead or had both feet in the grave waiting to collapse in it. His father would have long since died naturally if Stefan hadn’t killed him and his mother had died when Stefan was ten and Damon was fourteen._

_“No,” she admitted._

_Damon’s ego inflated with that admission. One didn’t really expect another vampire to be a virgin but to have never been with another of their own kind? It was tantamount to the same thing. He was her first. That gave him a rush of primal pleasure._

_He brushed his fingers through her hair and grinned wickedly. Her eyes shut blissfully, her lips finding the pulse of his wrist. She was deflecting again but just at the moment, he didn’t care.  He wanted to take her again._

_“Is that enough embarrassing personal information for the moment?” she asked._

_“For now,” he agreed and flipped her on her back, his mouth finding hers._

_***_

_For now. It became their motto. Damon stayed. He’d had her, made his conquest. Normally he would have moved on, found another or compelled himself a plaything but his curiosity about Claire was still not sated. He found himself pulled further and further into her web and while he knew what he was doing was wrong--he had other obligations, he was spoken for-- he couldn’t help himself. It was just a good time after all._

_Claire was vibrant in a way he couldn’t ignore. She was all Katherine had never been. She was at once a fierce and deadly hunter who reveled in the pursuit of prey and yet utterly guileless. Katherine had been mean, vain and manipulative, jaded. She had thrilled at playing Stefan and Damon against each other to vie for her affections. Loved to trick people to her own ends without a care for who she hurt in the process. Claire was pure in her way. She never tried to twist him or manipulate him, she just was. He’d never seen someone who could just ‘be’. Claire lived in the moment. And she made him live it with her. He found himself feeling like he hadn’t since he’d been human. Alive and free._

_Claire wasn’t chained by the need for vengeance against a backstabbing brother. She wasn’t bound by the desperate need to free the person she loved from entombment beneath Fell’s Church. A deed Damon couldn’t accomplish for another eighty two years, when the comet that had been overhead the night the witch Emily Bennett had saved Katherine’s life along with the other twenty six vampires of Mystic Falls by casting a spell that sealed them inside, came again. She seemed untouched by her past despite Vincent’s terrible tale._

_They spent their time in pleasure. Walks along the street by moonlight. Picnics in the park where he chased her through the trees in the darkness. Katherine had made him chase her but she had always made it nearly impossible to catch her, flaunting her superior speed, that he caught her only because she allowed it. Claire never ran more than a few paces ahead. It was Damon who chose when to catch her and make her his. He was older, stronger, faster. She couldn’t have gotten away from him anyway but she never really tried. It was all a mutual game._

_They prowled and danced the night away in the Red Ivy, feeding until they were blood drunk, night after night. They whiled away time gambling in the speakeasy’s back rooms, Claire on his arm as Damon’s lady luck. Sometimes Vincent went with them, sometimes not._

_Damon never missed a performance at the opera with Claire in it. ‘Carmen’, ‘The Barber of Seville’, ‘Mignon’, ‘Dido and Aeneas’, among others. They went to boxing matches and plays. Claire made him dance in the rain. If it came to their minds, they did it._

_She was frivolous unto being maddening and yet Damon rejoiced in it. He found a freshness, a freedom in Claire he hadn’t had in so long he had forgotten it._

_When Claire showed an interest in going to another speakeasy, “Gloria’s’—whose eponymous owner happened to be a witch--Damon had casually played it off. It had been his brother’s old stomping ground and Damon wanted no part of it. He hated the place. Claire never pressed him, she went along without a second thought._

_She seemed content to go wherever Damon wanted as long as they had fun doing it. She asked nothing of him, but for him to be himself. She never judged him. Not like his father had, Katherine had, Stefan had. She didn’t ridicule him for how he chose to live, she lived it with him. With Claire, Damon could just be and because of it, he found he wanted to give her everything._

_He compelled a shop owner during daylight hours to remain open for business after dark and then Damon took her there to shop for clothing. It was something she couldn’t normally do and he gave it to her happily. He spent hours watching her model the off the rack creations for him with all the exuberance of a child, completely mystified at how he’d managed to arrange it, never knowing that he could do what she could not. That he could walk in daylight when she never would.  He never questioned why he did it, never bothered to wonder why he felt the desire to please her or why he hadn’t yet told her about his ring._

_He asked her to sing for him in the dark when no one was listening just so he could hear her voice all to himself. She favored him with endless renditions of ‘Bye, Bye Blackbird’ whenever he liked, when she wouldn’t for anyone else. Others had asked for private performances, she always refused them. But for him she’d sing at the drop of a hat.  He never wondered why, though it pleased him immensely._

_Eventually, they teased each other’s secrets from each one another._

_And under the satin covers of Claire’s bed intoxicated by her in the throes of wild passion and playful pleasure he lost himself.  And Damon forgot, as the weeks stretched into months, that he hated his brother and had vowed to cause him an eternity of misery. He forgot that Katherine was entombed for the next eighty years, imprisoned away from him. He forgot his need for revenge and lived for the moment. He even began to forget that this was just idle fun._

_They owned the night and the world stood still._

_If only they had known._


	3. Chapter 3

Damon came back to himself slowly, still staring into the last of the bourbon in his glass. The thrum of the dissipating crowd of patrons at the ‘Mystic Grill’ unnoticed.

For a year, Damon had forgotten himself. Or rather found himself again albeit with a great deal more bloodlust. For a year, dare he think it…he had been happy again. By the time, he realized that he had fallen in love with Claire it had been too late to stop it and it had torn him apart. He still loved Katherine then and falling in love with Claire too had made him feel guilty, that he had betrayed Katherine by loving Claire. Even though Katherine was trapped in a tomb and beyond his reach for the next eighty-two years he convinced himself that he was a traitor. He had tormented himself with it.

Eventually he had learned all Claire’s secrets and she had learned his, including about Katherine and the daylight ring. He had also learned exactly what Vincent had meant about Claire’s temper. Claire didn’t get mad… she went into a blind rage. Then their perfect moment had blown up like an atom bomb and was currently back to haunt them. But those were memories for another time.

Now, Claire was back and instead of Katherine, who he now knew had never loved him at all and was God knew where protecting her own ass from Klaus and Damon was in love with Elena. But again he was faced with the same thing. Mystic Falls, home to history repeating. It was like a damn force of nature here.

Damon had never fallen out of love with Claire. He’d done what he had to, to protect Claire, to be faithful to Katherine. Damon didn’t mind being the bad guy if he needed to be. But he had never stopped loving Claire. Damon shook his head to clear it. Yes he had, he told himself. It had been eighty years. He might have loved her once but not anymore, he reasoned. It had been eighty years.

Now, stupidly, he loved his brother’s girl, whom he could never have because she could never love him. He was dangerous, impulsive, unremorseful and selfish. He lashed out and pushed people away. He killed people, he was all vampire. But Claire had. She had loved him without reservation, faults and all, and he knew it and that made this all so much worse.

Damn it, hadn’t he deserved to be happy? To have someone love him back for once? Didn’t he deserve it now? Of all the people in the world to turn up out of the blue on his doorstep shish-kabobbed, it had to be the one that would torment him most. Why him?  Correction, Mystic Falls, home to history repeating, willful self-denial and too many coincidences to even count.

“Last call!” yelled the bartender. Damon looked up from his glass. The Grill had become almost deserted as people cleared out for the night. A quick look at his watch told him he’d been lost in his memories for two hours and he still hadn’t found Alexander. To be honest he hadn’t really expected it to be easy but he had hoped a little.

His current situation weighted on him. Damon shrugged it off as he pulled a couple of twenties out of his wallet and tossed them on the bar. The bartender grabbed them as he wiped down the counter and Damon left through the back exit into the parking lot.  Damon had more important things to worry about than his romantic entanglements. He had a crazed vampire bent on revenge to find before he could kill Damon and subsequently Claire. Whom he also had to worry about. Because the instant the vervain was out of her system, Claire was going to go slightly crazy herself and he really did not need two vengeful vampires out for blood in a town that had its own council of vampire hunters via the Founder’s Council. One was crazy and the other would be so rage blind because the first had killed someone she cared about, she’d kill anything in her way.

The irony didn’t fail to strike Damon. Him, king of the impulsive murderous rampage, worried about Claire leaving a trail of bodies in her wake. He told himself it was because he was trying to prevent a bigger problem than just Alexander. Not that he was worried about protecting Claire from an obsessed, pissed off sire that was five hundred years older than she was. Not because he was pissed about what Alexander had done to her to get to him. Not because he still cared, still loved her. Yep, that was it.

 He knew he was lying to himself and he knew he was good at it. He’d been doing it for one hundred and forty seven years. Why stop now?

As he made his way into the parking lot, he stopped. A familiar sweetness laced with the tang of copper and iron was in the air like cloying perfume. Blood. Lots of it. Damon followed it cautiously, someone was bleeding out or was very dead. He could smell too much for it to be something as simple as a scrape.

He had a sense of foreboding. What were the chances it was a coincidence that he just happened to walk into the parking lot right when the air was filled with the scent of fresh blood? Not real high.

Following the scent Damon made his careful way through the darkened parking lot, able to see as well as he could in the daylight. Vampires had great night vision as long as it wasn’t totally dark, a bit like a cat.

When he found the source, he let out a rough sigh and briefly hoped he was drunker than he thought he was but blinking and shaking his head didn’t make it go away. Crap.

“Great,” he muttered in annoyance.

It was no one he knew. But what had done it was very obvious. A vampire. The man, a middle-aged balding husband/father type, had the unmistakable bite pattern of a vampire on his neck. The attack had been vicious but not enough to hide what had done it. A pool of blood was beneath the man’s head, eyes staring into the night sky. Far less than there should have been. A vampire had definitely fed on him and then left him to be found carelessly…right by Damon’s car.

Damon looked around him warily but could sense nor see anything but the cars and the dead man. What were the chances that another vampire was in town on top of Claire and Alexander and was leaving dead victims in the parking lot of the establishment Damon had just been in? Really friggin’ slim. He might as well have put up a billboard. It had to be Alexander. He was taunting him and Damon knew it.

_I was here and you didn’t even see me. You can’t stop me._

Damon seethed. He hated being taunted. He hated someone screwing with him. People, human or vampire, who screwed with him ended up very dead. He knew it was exactly what Alexander wanted.

Alexander was up to his old tricks again, somehow he’d managed to slip right past Damon’s radar and kill the man under his nose.

Damon grimaced. He was going to have to dispose of the body to prevent the Founder’s Council, which he happened to be a member of for just this sort of reason, from finding out they had a rampaging vampire in town. They had no idea Damon was himself a vampire since they didn’t know about the existence of the daylight rings.

Otherwise, he’d have to find a way to keep what was going on secret from them while they tried to hunt down a vampire they couldn’t hope to kill even if they tried. Talk about a lot of dead bodies. Alexander could slaughter the whole council and not even break a sweat. And that was on top of keeping the whole Klaus debacle a secret too.

Taking a quick look around first to make sure no one would see him he knelt down beside the dead man’s body. “Sorry about this buddy. But it’s the bottom of the quarry for you.”

 

***

 

By the time, Damon dumped the dead body in the quarry it was four in the morning. He expected to come home to a quiet house. Instead, he found Stefan and Elena waiting for him and neither looked all that pleased.

“What? Did I break curfew or something?”  he asked snarkily off their annoyed glances.  Elena crossed her arms.

“You hung up on me.”

“You were bugging me,” Damon retorted.

He was in a bad mood. He couldn’t help it. He’d just spent the night drowning in his own regrets only to discover Alexander, the nut job fang case who wanted to kill him and the ex-girlfriend he was trying to desperately pretend he hadn’t ever cared about, was taunting him and having to dump a body to cover his and every other vampire in Mystic Falls asses, including Alexander. Damon Salvatore, self-denying, angsty, cover up artist extraordinaire.

“Bugging you?” Elena bit. “Are you drunk?” she asked hotly. Oh, he’d made her mad. Goody. Now if he could just make Claire mad at him too he’d have a perfect record. Then again, he might not have to try.

“Amazingly no,” Damon said and tried to move past them for the stairs. He was tired, he wanted to go to sleep. He had a long day ahead of him tomorrow. He’d had time to come up with a tenuous plan while he was busy disposing with parking-lot-dead-guy. Said plan required him to be up soon, he had to do it during the day because of a certain pretty little vampire in his bed.

“You’re taking this all a little lightly don’t you think?” Stefan asked. Surprisingly, Stefan’s tone wasn’t as accusatory as it was before, it was curious and maybe a little speculative. Double uh oh. Stefan couldn’t have figured it out already could he?

Damon paused at the foot of the stairs. “Oh no. I’m not taking this lightly at all. Trust me.”

“Then why were you out all night?” Elena asked testy.

“Because I was canvassing. FYI Alexander is not and has not been in any bed and breakfast, motel or hotel in Mystic Falls. He has also not been seen by anyone else in Mystic Falls because I went to The Grill and asked around. He has, however, already ripped out the throat of a middle-aged blue-collar gentleman in the parking lot of said Grill. I got rid of the body. You’re welcome,” Damon said starting up the stairs.

“What?” Elena gasped. “I thought he only wanted you and Claire.”

“He does. He’s making himself known. He wants me to know he’s here and that I can’t find him. This is what he does. Oh, and I think he has a daylight ring. It’s the only way he could have dropped Claire and run without turning into toast.”

“Great,” Stefan snorted.

“’This is what he does?’ And you just happened not to mention that?” Elena railed at him in righteous anger. “He killed an innocent man!”

“He’s a vampire Elena,” Damon countered. “Of course he killed someone. What? You thought he was gonna send a text message?” Elena’s eyes flashed fiercely.

“Claire wasn’t enough of a message?” Stefan asked his tone far more even than Elena’s outraged one. Damon didn’t like that tone. Stefan only got even mannered with him when he thought he had Damon figured out. Thing was he usually did.

Damon came back down a step or two with a sigh. He wasn’t going to get any sleep until he satisfied them. “Claire was the message. The parking-lot guy was his first move. The next one’s mine.”

“And what’s that move gonna be?” Stefan pressed. He was standing in an open stance, not his usual crossed arms haughty one, the one that meant he had started to discern the shape of the matter and was a hair’s breadth from beating Damon at his own game. Sometimes Damon really wondered why he had ever reconciled, more or less, with his little brother. His attitude just made Damon want to stake him but he couldn’t stake his brother if he wasn’t currently in the midst of trying to make his life hell now could he? Can’t live with him, can’t live without him.

“I have to find him first. Which is why I am going to bed. In the morning, I’ll go see Bonnie and see if she can do a location spell to find him. Then I’m gonna kill him, preferably with a great deal of pain,” Damon explained in brief. Bonnie Bennett was the descendant of Emily Bennett and a very powerful witch in her own right, just like her ancestor had been. If anyone could find Alexander, it was her. If Damon could convince her to help him. She didn’t particularly like Damon and the only reason she had helped him in the past was to protect Elena and save innocents. This didn’t fall under the ‘protect Elena’ category so she might just give him one of those witchy vampire aneurysm migraines and slam the door in his face but he had to try.

“You need something of Alexander’s to do a location spell, you know that Damon,” Elena pointed out, she had joined Stefan at the foot of the stairs to stare up at him like an annoyed mother.

“I have something,” Damon said certainly, though he really wasn’t certain at all. He was hanging it all on a very large maybe but he honestly didn’t know what else he could try.

“What?” Stefan asked.

Damon sighed. Caught by the little brother. Every single friggin’ time. “Okay, I have something, maybe.” Stefan and Elena just looked at him expectantly. He was not going to tell him what his ‘maybe something’ was.  They’d just have to deal, because if he did he’d have to explain everything and then Stefan would get to be all smug and self righteous and just no.

“Maybe?” Stefan said.

“Yes maybe. Look, Alexander isn’t stupid. He’s a complete nut job but he isn’t stupid. So unless Bonnie can locate him with a spell, the only other option I have is to search every house in Mystic Falls, every hole, every abandoned warehouse. He could be hiding in any of them and if the house is occupied and he has compelled the resident to let him in and then compelled them not to tell…,” Damon said. Stefan nodded in understanding.

“Then finding him might be almost impossible unless he wants to be found.”

“So unless you have a better idea…,” Damon said petulantly.  

“No, you’re right,” Stefan relented. Damon almost felt like passing out with shock. Stefan wasn’t going to argue with him?  “But,” Stefan said. Damon had known it was too good to be true. “If this guy is killing innocent people just to take a jab at you he’s a danger to all of us. If he exposes us…”

Damon rolled his eyes. “He won’t, I’ll fix it. I always fix it.”

“And if he kills someone else? The council is going to notice Damon. Why is he doing this if he just wants you and Claire dead?”

Damon sighed. Stefan had him there. He couldn’t avoid the obvious. “He’s trying to out me. To taunt me. To piss me off. He succeeded in pissing me off.”

Stefan shook his head his mouth open to say something but Elena beat him to it. “Why? If he just wants to kill you because you tried to kill him, why? If he wants Claire dead why did he drop her  in that condition but still alive on our door step? Why not just kill her and then come after you? He’s left you with an ally, why would he do that?” Damon didn’t say anything. His jaw flexed. Dangerously close to the truth. Elena shook her head at him in disappointment.

“Why do you do this? You hang up on me, you stay out drinking all night when you say a crazed vampire wants you dead. You won’t tell anyone anything. You make jokes and pretend it doesn’t matter. I was worried about you, Damon.  Why won’t you let us help you? Why is Alexander doing this?” her voice had gone from angry to almost shrill. She really did want to help him, she always did much to his chagrin. It would have been so much easier if she hated him. But no, she had to think he was worth saving, be his friend and mean it.

Damon’s brow furrowed, his mouth a thin line and something broke. Damn her all to hell, he broke. She pushed and he crumbled because she knew just where to push hardest.

His eyes softened and looked pained. “Because, he’s trying to hurt me before he kills me. Happy now?”

Elena’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped open. She hadn’t expected him to tell her any part of the truth that mattered and he had and now she felt terrible for pushing him so hard.

“How? she began.

“Good night, Elena,” Damon said and stalked up the stairs ignoring them both.

“Damon…,” Elena tried again but Stefan put his hand on her arm to stop her.

“Let him go.”

It was the same thing he had said earlier but his voice wasn’t bitter or angry it was soft.  He was looking up the stairs after Damon with a peculiar expression.

“But…,” Elena started to protest. Stefan shook his head.

“He’s right. Bonnie is our best bet.”

 “I don’t understand.”

“I think I might,” Stefan said and frowned.

Damon’s behavior combined with Elena’s mention of a ‘twisted Phantom of the Opera thing’ had made him think.

Unlike Elena, Stefan knew the tale of the Phantom of the Opera and he thought Raoul had just fled up the stairs. But he wanted to be sure first, before he called Damon out on it. Damon was volatile at the best of times. When Damon was hurt he lashed out and right now Stefan could tell he was dangerously close to allowing himself to admit that he wasn’t the callous ass he pretended to be, that maybe he was hurt. Stefan gave the upper landing a look as he heard the bedroom door to Damon’s room open and shut. _Careful brother. Your humanity is showing_ , he thought.

 

***

Damon woke in darkness. It took him a moment to realize why it was dark when his brain knew it should be daylight. The curtains. He’d shut all the curtains so no light would get in when he’d gone to bed, to protect Claire. He groaned and rolled over feeling less than rested and decidedly uncomfortable. He had slept in his clothes, choosing to be a gentleman and sleep on top of the covers of his bed instead of under them since Claire was sound asleep beneath them.

He could have slept in a different bedroom, there were five more unoccupied ones but he hadn’t. He told himself it was because this was _his_ bed, why should he _not_ sleep in it? Not that perhaps he was concerned about the occupant on the other side. He had indulged himself in a fit of tenderness, reaching out his hand as he lay beside her and stroking the tips of his fingers through the hair at her temple and running the backs of them across her cheek as she slumbered.

“Why did it have to be you?” he had murmured.

He’d been so angry when he came up here he had wanted to break something. Elena and her concern. Stefan and his knowing heavy browed stare. He couldn’t stand either one of them right then.  Why couldn’t either of them leave him alone?  

But then he’d seen Claire lying there, helpless as a new born kitten, her long dark lashes against her normally rosy cheeks with her raven dark hair fanned out on the oversized pillows. Her mouth had been parted a little, making her look like an innocent thing. He liked her hair better this way. Even though it was a mess right now, he thought the soft fall of it suited her more than the short bob she had favored in the twenties. Now it would fall just below her shoulders when it was styled, a fringe of long layered bangs framing her face.

It made her look more innocent than he remembered. He knew how deceiving that was. She could have used that cherubic face to good effect if she had wanted to but Claire had never been the manipulative type. That was Damon. Claire was very straight-forward. If she wanted you, you knew it. If she liked you, she made it plain. If she hated you, she killed you, no subterfuge involved. Damon was the one who twisted and wove until he had what he wanted. He was the schemer. Claire would just rip your head off, in front of God and everybody if that happened to be where she was when her temper snapped, and walk away.

If he had gone into a fit of anger and broken something, he’d have woken her. She had needed the rest. She still had vervain in her system. It would take until tonight before it was completely gone. In fact, he was counting on that, Claire’s lack of a daylight ring and her straightforward personality against his own manipulative one for his plan to work.

He knew he was playing with fire. He knew what he was doing was cruel to him, to her. He knew he was just as likely to be the one burned here as she was but he had to do it. It was a slippery slope. He told himself he was doing it for the greater good. That some part of him didn’t want it just because he still cared. That he wasn’t doing this because he was protecting Claire, he was preventing a secondary problem from developing.

To do that, he had to find Alexander first. The moment the vervain was out of Claire’s system completely and she was at full strength, the moment night fell, she’d go after Alexander and she’d lose. That wouldn’t stop her, she wouldn’t think about that. She’d be hell-bent on revenge at any price. She’d kill anything that got in her way and to hell with the consequences, even if one of the people she killed was herself in the process.

So, he was going to have to distract her. Whether he used seduction or irritation depended on how Claire acted. She’d either fall for him all over again (he wasn’t doing this because he was still in love with her, he repeated to himself) or she’d hate him. Either way her emotions would be divided and that meant she would be torn between him and revenge and hopefully distracted enough to not realize he was trying to beat her to the punch. He preferred the seduction route (he was not doing this because he still cared) it was infinitely more fun. But if he had to piss her off then so be it. He didn’t mind being the bad guy.

To an extent, (and it allowed him to lie to himself and almost believe it) his reasoning was sound. If Claire stopped feeling, if she decided to switch off her humanity because she couldn’t take Vincent’s loss…he well knew she would be incredibly dangerous. She’d be nothing but her rage and vindictiveness. Damon shivered at the idea. Claire with no humanity.  She might even become a Ripper. It was Damon’s job to keep her feeling.

Damon looked at the opposite side of his huge bed. It was empty, the covers pushed back and rumpled. The blood bag he had left on the nightstand was empty, the glass beside it sticky with the residue of left over blood. Damon could hear the shushing rush of water as it ran. Claire was up and in his shower.

_Up and at ‘em Damon_ , he thought. _Time to do your worst._ He ignored the fact that he wasn’t sure to whom he was doing his worst. Him or her.  And there was the fact that Claire was in his large glass walk in shower, naked. Mmmm. Silver lining.

He got up and padded around the bed to peer into his bathroom. The sound of the shower covered the sound of his movement. Claire wouldn’t know he was there. He stood there a moment looking at her. She had her back to him, head tilted back in the stream of steaming hot water as it sluiced over her lithe, nude body. She was still as beautiful as he remembered. Claire wasn’t quite as thin as Elena, but all that dancing she loved so much had left Claire with an awesome figure. She was curvy in all the right places and endowed just enough to make a man salivate, human or vampire. He grinned wickedly.

Damon stripped where he stood and zipped to the shower door before Claire could notice him. He opened the shower door and dashed inside. Claire grabbed him swiftly, pinning him to the wall by his throat. “Ow,” he gurgled.

Claire blinked in surprise. She had reacted on predatory instinct the instant she knew someone was there.

“Damon!” she gasped and released him. Damon rubbed his throat where she had been clenching it. “You know better than to sneak up on a vampire,” Claire hissed.

“If you wanted to get kinky all you had to do was ask,” Damon said salaciously, his gaze traveling over her wet naked body as water washed over it.  “There’s a sight for sore eyes,” he muttered saucily. It was kind of hard, naked as he was, to hide the fact that he very much liked what he saw.  No pun intended. Claire noticed, her gaze flitting over his wet form with a quickly hidden heated look. She quelled it. So, Claire was going to play coy.

“Mind if I join you?” he said his grin broadening as he picked up the bath pouf and lathered it. He advanced on her and she backed up automatically until her back was against the glass wall. He pressed himself against her and began to wash her skin, trying fiercely to ignore the fire touching her skin caused. To pretend it was only lust, only a game.  She didn’t resist him. He had one hand braced against the glass wall as he massaged across her collarbone and shoulders with the pouf. It was a unique effect; it looked like they were leaned against thin air.

Claire’s eyes shut a moment in pleasure and he bent his head to nuzzle her neck, his free arm sliding with soapy slickness around her waist to glide up her spine. Claire moaned and Damon took advantage of it, kissing her throat teasingly.

“Damon…,” she protested half-heartedly.  Damon laughed, never moving his mouth from her neck as he kissed his way over it. The vibration it caused made Claire gasp and he was rewarded as she wriggled against him, her body rubbing against all of him.

“Suddenly you’re modest?” he teased. Oh God, he’d forgotten what her skin tasted like, how she felt against him. The way it felt to spend his nights tangled around her. He couldn’t help the flare of want that rushed through him. The thrum of her pulse against his lips, rapid and hard. The memory of the taste of her… Dangerous ground. He had to keep his focus. But he wanted so badly to abandon himself to it.

“Damon…,” Claire protested again and it was so pitifully lacking in truth that the hush of it made Damon’s skin prickle.

“Five minutes…,” Damon said, letting himself enjoy the feel of her wet body against him, the way she shifted and moved with the same desire. He’d forgotten the thrill the sound of his name on her lips gave him. Claire moaned and Damon almost lost it. Almost forgot he was supposed to be distracting her and not himself. He ran a hand through her wet hair as he continued letting his mouth and tongue rove over her skin, to nibble her ear lobe gently.

“I like your hair better long,” he murmured, moving along her jaw line toward her lips. Oh he was going to hang himself. Give him enough rope….

“Now is not a good time,” Claire protested with a little renewed vigor.

“Then why don’t you stop me?” Damon teased as he ran his hands over her body. He wanted her. How he wanted her again, like he used to have her. She could stop him. He was older and stronger, faster if only by a little. But she could most definitely stop him if she wanted to, unless he wanted to force himself on her, which he would never do. One good throw and she could send him crashing through his coveted glass shower and out of the bathroom into the bedroom.

“Stop,” Claire said forcefully. Damon stopped instantly in confusion. That had been a definite demand but it wasn’t just a demand there was something else there… anger? Well, he’d meant to piss her off or seduce her but he wasn’t sure why she was mad at him _now_. She’d most certainly been responding to him in the positive. He pulled back and looked at her, still braced on the wall with his arm.

“You’re mad at me,” he said in surprise. Claire swallowed and looked back at him, warm mahogany staring into ice blue with something Damon wasn’t sure he could work out.

“Something like that.”

“Last night you were crying on my shoulder,” Damon pointed out. Claire’s expression hardened. Well, he was on a roll today wasn’t he?

“Last night I was full of vervain.”

“You’re still full of vervain,” Damon said a hint of irritation creeping into his voice. This was turning into a real spat in a hurry. “And vervain doesn’t work like that,” he parroted back at her from last night.

“I had a moment of weakness,” Claire bit back.

“I’m a weakness now?”

Then Damon realized why she was mad at him. She wasn’t mad at him _now_. She’d _been_ mad at him for the last eighty years. He’d known she might be, known she was as likely to throw him out the nearest window as succumb to his charms. But he’d forgotten, consumed by the feel of her, the taste of her skin after so long without it. Claire was glaring at him. Well, he had wanted to divide her between him and revenge, he’d gotten it. Careful what you wish for. Damon tried to play it off.

“Eighty years later and you’re still mad at me for that?”

“For which part? The part where you snapped my neck or the part where you disappeared without so much as a goodbye?” Claire bit in a deeply hurt voice.  Damon winced, stricken. He deserved that. He more than deserved it.

Claire ducked under his arm and got out, tracking water everywhere as she grabbed a towel off the rack. She wrapped it around her, taking a second with her for her hair. Damon got out after her, snagging the remaining two towels and tucking one around his waist as she stalked out of the bathroom. He went after her.

“I snapped your neck because you were being hard-headed. I snapped Vincent’s neck too. It wasn’t personal,” Damon insisted petulantly. Claire was roughly drying her hair as if she could divert part of her anger at him if she abused it enough. She stopped and rounded on him, hair a wet tangle around her face and her eyes so deeply hurt Damon felt like someone had driven a knife in his heart. And it was his fault.

“And not saying goodbye? Was that ‘not personal’ too?” she spat.

Damon couldn’t think of anything to say. He stood there a line between his brows and his mouth slightly agape. Claire snorted and shook her head, tossing the sodden towel on his bed. Now we were being petty, were we? Claire turned away.

“You’re going to have to forgive me sooner or later,” Damon insisted his voice casually light because he really hadn’t wanted _this_ argument to happen as he toweled off his hair. Damon sauntered over to his dresser, drying his hair as he went and pulled out a set of clothes for himself in his usual shades of gray and black.  He got on boxers briefs and jeans quickly, functionally. He’d meant to make her mad at him if it came to it but not this way.

“That’s debatable,” Claire snipped, looking around the room for something. Damon felt a pang that she might really mean that but then he felt a faint cocky grin pull at his lips and looked behind them into the bathroom. Her shredded and blood stained clothes were in a heap on the floor, utterly useless. She didn’t have anything to wear.  He took another shirt out of the drawer, a dark blue button down.

He held it out to her on the end of his finger teasingly, his mouth still twisted into a grin. He couldn’t help himself, he was an incorrigible beast. She glared at him and snatched it, sliding it on deftly over the towel so he wouldn’t be able to see anything. Damon sauntered over to her as she started to button it and took over, doing them up slowly. She didn’t move away from him and she didn’t stop him.

“I saved your life last night,” he pointed out with a playful tone. Was he trying to get back in her good graces? Hadn’t he been trying to seduce her or make her mad at him? She was looking up at him with her pert little mouth set and her eyes unreadable. “You can’t be that mad at me,” he said as he worked. “You haven’t tried to rip my heart out.” He meant that literally. Claire didn’t do ‘mad’ she went into a rage and killed something.

Claire said nothing in return as he finished. Damon looked down at her, running his fingers under the collar of the shirt to straighten it. “Oh come on,” he cajoled. “This isn’t you. Where’s the wanton, carefree party girl I used to know?” He pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear gently.

Claire swallowed and her brow tightened. “Maybe she died in that alley,” she whispered.

Damon felt like she’d slapped him. That hurt. His hands went slack and fell on her shoulders but she moved from his touch. Damon wanted to reach out to her, to call her back his face contorted in hurt. But he didn’t. He didn’t mind being the bad guy remember? Better she hate him, better that she divide her rage and anger between him and revenge, that she not loose herself to the grief of Vincent’s death than go after Alexander rage blind and grief stricken. She’d die.

Damon picked up his biker boots. “Listen, I have to run an errand. I’ll ask Elena if she’ll lend you some pants. You two are about the same size. While I have no problem with you walking around the house half naked I don’t think Stefan would appreciate it, neither would Elena. They have this outdated notion of propriety. I’ll be back later.”  He started for the door.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” Claire said.

Damon stopped and shut his eyes against the wave of hurt that came with that comment. He forced his expression into its usual mix of cocky and charming to hide the pained regret he felt.  To keep Claire from seeing. Claire had an almost freakily perceptive nature. If he wasn’t careful, she’d see straight through him. He looked back. She was standing in the middle of the floor, holding her arms in a very vulnerable way. His face softened and he gave her a wan smile.

 “You look good in my shirt,” he said and then he walked out.

 

***

 

Elena shouldered on her purse, about to leave for school for which she was already late, just as Damon came waltzing down the stairs from his bedroom. Stefan leaned against the banister and looked back over his shoulder at his brother.

“Trouble in paradise?” he teased darkly.

Damon rolled his eyes at him as he descended the stairs to the floor. “Eavesdropping again?”

“Just taking a cue from your playbook,” Stefan pointed out pushing off the banister.

“Harty-har-har,” Damon snipped back. “Claire’s pissed at me, Elena’s pissed at me, you’re pissed at me. The earth is back on its axis. Ain’t it grand?”

“You tell me.” Stefan countered.

“Guys,” Elena protested. She could see this was very close to turning into an argument. Elena didn’t understand what Stefan’s problem was, he kept antagonizing Damon when he knew the worst possible thing to do to his brother was to provoke him. Damon would retaliate and he knew it. Hadn’t Damon’s angry remark last night told him anything? Damon never admitted someone wanted to hurt him, because Damon claimed he couldn’t _be_ hurt because he didn’t care. Which meant Damon _was_ hurt or afraid he was going to be.

“I’m not talking to you. Because you are being a dick,” Damon snarked and glanced to Elena. “Claire’s a little pants-less currently. Could you lend her a pair?” he asked Elena sweetly.

“Yeah, sure,” Elena said, removing her purse from her arm and setting it on a table. “What’s another fifteen minutes?”

“Another fifteen minutes?” Damon asked confused.

“Yeah. I’m already late for school,” Elena pointed out.

Damon blinked and looked at Stefan. “Are you hearing this?”

“I thought you weren’t talking to me?” Stefan said. Damon glared.

“I’m hearing it,” Stefan admitted.

“Don’t you have more important things to worry about than school right now? Like staying away from the mysterious Klaus?” Damon asked incredulous and concerned, turning back to Elena. “Keeping you safe from him is why we deeded the house to you in the first place. It’s only a safe house, if you’re _in_ the house.”

“I know that. But no one knows where he is or even when he’ll show up. I’m not going to stay here and be a prisoner every hour of every day. Besides I’ll have Bonnie with me.”

“Forgive me if I’m a little less than ecstatic that you have Bonnie to be your body guard,” Damon snorted.

“I’m going with her,” Stefan said. Damon threw up his hands.

“My rules, you promised Damon,” Elena admonished.

“It’s fine. Besides I don’t want her alone in the house with Claire,” Stefan said.

“Alone? You going somewhere?” Damon asked suspiciously.

“With you,” Stefan said with a hint of arrogant glee.

“One…no you aren’t. Two… Claire wouldn’t hurt Elena. In fact, she’d protect her,” Damon said with growing irritation.

“Why? She doesn’t even know her,” Stefan said and Elena finally figured out why her boyfriend kept needling his big brother subtly. He was prying tidbits of information out of him one at a time.

“Elena’s human, she’s not compelled and she helped Claire knowing what she is. The list of uncompelled humans that have helped Claire _knowing_ she’s a vampire is _very_ short. She’d protect her for that alone. Claire’s weird like that.”

“Alright, fine,” Stefan relented. Damon gave him an odd look for it. “But I’m still going with you.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“Elena is going to school. I’m going with her. Bonnie will be at school therefore _you_ have to go to school too. So I am going with you one way or another.”

“Fine. Just stay out of my way,” Damon spat growing angry. Stefan seemed unfazed by it. Damon stalked past him heading toward the kitchen.

“Bonnie doesn’t like you, Damon. What are you going to do if she says, no? You’re going to need my help.”

“No. I don’t,” Damon insisted in a slightly sing song tone. Stefan snorted and shook his head as Damon disappeared from their eye line.

“Where are all the extra spice bottles?” Damon asked rhetorically of no one as Elena heard him rummaging through the kitchen.

“Second drawer on the left,” Stefan called with an arrogant amusement in his voice. “Told you, you need my help.”

“Shut up,” Damon called back.

Elena snorted at both of them and started to demand Stefan tell her what it was he thought he was doing but Stefan shook his head at her, pointing to his ear and then toward the kitchen. He didn’t want to explain where Damon might hear him. Elena just looked irritated with them both and bounded up the stairs to fetch that pair of pants.

 

***

Elena knocked softly on Damon’s door, a pair of old jeans, some socks and a pair of underwear tucked against her chest.

“Come in,” came the soft reply. Elena eased the door open and peered around it. Claire was sitting in the middle of Damon’s rumpled bed in one of his shirts, her knees pulled up to her chin and glaring balefully at a sliver of sunlight that cut across the room, trapping her inside. Elena took in what Claire the vampire looked like when she wasn’t impersonating ‘The Curse of the Mummy’.

Her hair was as black as Damon’s and her skin an even shade of olive.  Her hair was slightly   wavy, not the cultivated waves Katherine favored or the trendy scrunched ‘beach waves’ look, the natural kind that had consented to be tamed but would be prone to frizzing in high humidity.  Elena’s mother would have said it had ‘body’. She looked so young sitting there Elena almost forgot that she was at least a hundred. She didn’t look a day over twenty. And she looked utterly innocent with her soft features sitting there staring at the shaft of sunlight with contempt and her lips set as if they might tremble any moment and Claire burst into tears….or kill something.

“ Hi, I’m Elena,” Elena introduced brightly as she stepped into the room and shut the door quietly behind her. She moved to the curtain and pulled it shut, blocking the bit of sunlight that had crept in.

“Claire, but then you know that,” Claire said, uncurling and sitting on the side of the bed as if she had been trying to stay as far away from the beam of light as she could until Elena had made it go away. Elena looked a little surprised Claire knew her name. “Side effect of being desiccated. Can’t move, all your organs shut down, you are in excruciating pain but you can still hear everything around you.”

“That must be so horrible,” Elena said shaking her head. Claire arched an eyebrow at her as if she didn’t believe Elena thought it was. That was an odd reaction.

“Damon said you didn’t have any pants and he thinks we’re about the same size so he asked if I could lend you a pair of mine. I think you might be a little bigger than me but I guess pants are pants right?” Elena said casually. “And I included socks and some underwear. Men never think of the little things,” she added holding out the articles with a little flourish. Claire eyed the bundle as if she were deciding if she should take it or not and then looked Elena up and down like she didn’t know what to make of her.

“Thank you,” Claire said finally, taking the articles cautiously.  Elena frowned a little at her, as she sat down on the side of the bed beside Claire. Claire looked very confused and lost just now and she felt sad for her. Vampire or not, she still had feelings, still felt pain.  Claire gave her a sidelong glance.

“And thank you for helping me before. You didn’t have to.”

Elena blinked in confusion. “You were hurt. You needed help.”

“You defied Damon just now so I know you’re not compelled,” Claire said. Elena raised a brow. “Vampire hearing. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but the stairs aren’t that far away,” Claire explained.  Elena nodded briefly in understanding as Claire went on. Elena listened perplexed by Damon’s former fling. She wasn’t what Elena would have expected. An ex of Damon’s should be more wanton and impulsive, callous like he could be.  Instead, she seemed almost mystified by the fact that Elena hadn’t let her lay on the doorstep and burn.

“But still you helped me, knowing what I am. With no expectation of something in return except maybe a desiccated vampire sucking you dry in order to survive. So thank you.”

Elena shook her head, pushing her cascade of very long silky brown hair behind her ears absently. It was a constant habit she had ceased to notice years ago. “Vampire or not. I couldn’t just leave you like that.”

“You don’t know me.  I’m a vampire. I could have killed you if I wanted to,” Claire insisted.

“Damon and Stefan wouldn’t have let you,” Elena said thinking Claire meant an accidental kill, the instinctive need for blood that could have overcome her in the condition she had been in.

“That’s not the point,” Claire said. “I could still kill you.”

Elena sat back, a little afraid. Was that a threat? She looked hard at Claire but her face wasn’t threatening it was pained and confused.  No, Elena didn’t think it was a threat. She thought Claire couldn’t understand why she wasn’t afraid of her when if she chose to, Damon and Stefan notwithstanding, she could kill her in a heartbeat. Why a human would help an unknown vampire of their own free will.

“You don’t have a reason to,” Elena said.

“I’m a vampire. I don’t need a reason,” Claire countered.

“No,” Elena said shaking her head firmly. “You don’t. But you wouldn’t.”

“How do you know that?” Claire pushed. Elena moved her head in a little empathetic movement, half-nod half-shake.

“I just do. You’re not an animal,” Elena said, flashing on what Damon had said about Claire on the stairs. Claire’s face softened and Elena saw a burst of gratitude and pain in the other woman’s warm brown eyes. Claire looked away from her as if she didn’t want Elena to see it.

“Have you really had that few people help you?” Elena said softly. What a horrible way to live, she thought.

“Like Damon said, the list of humans who have helped me without expecting something in return or being compelled is very short.”

Elena nodded and then let the subject go. It seemed to bother Claire to talk about it and Elena didn’t want to make Claire dredge up anything that would hurt her. She had been hurt enough as far as Elena was concerned.

“How are you feeling?” she asked instead. Claire chuckled sardonically.

“Do you want the honest answer or the socially acceptable one?” she asked as she reached for the bottle of bourbon Damon had left on the nightstand, pouring a glass half full of it. She motioned with the bottle asking if Elena wanted one too. Elena shook her head briefly.

“Let’s go with honest. Socially acceptable is over rated,” Elena said with a touch of humor. Claire actually grinned a little and took a drink of the amber liquid.

“I don’t know whether to cry until the world stops spinning or kill someone or both. I’m sure Damon has already told you about Alexander. He killed someone very important to me. Vincent. We were together for a hundred years. He was like a father to me,” Claire said, her throat convulsing as if she were fighting not to cry, eyes glassy.

Elena reached out a hand and rubbed the woman’s arm consolingly. “I’m so sorry. I know what you’re going through. My parents died in a car crash not longago. It devastated me.”

“She saves stray vampires and she consoles them in their grief,” Claire said with dark humor. Then she looked at Elena and smiled wanly. “I see why Damon is with you. You’re very compassionate.”

Elena blinked and laughed at Claire’s assumption. She couldn’t help it. Her and Damon? Together? Not in a million years.. “With Damon? No. No. no. Me and Damon aren’t together. I’m Stefan’s girlfriend.”

Now Claire looked befuddled again. “Damon seemed awfully concerned about you. Something about someone named Klaus being after you? I apologize by the way for ending up here like this when you obviously have something major going on already. Damon, always did say I have the worst timing.”

“It’s okay. Really. It’s not like you planned this,” Elena assured her.

“Hardly,” Claire agreed with a snort.

“But Damon’s concerned because he’s my friend. That’s all.”

Claire shook her head again. “You’re not compelled. Why would you choose to be with Stefan?”

Elena looked at her dumbly for a moment and then grinned a little. Apparently, Claire thought Damon was the more desirable of the two with his wit and charm. Elena got it. Most women threw themselves at Damon and he relished every moment of it and usually took liberal advantage of the fact. “What? You think Damon is the better choice?”

“If I had to choose it would definitely be Damon,” Claire said confirming Elena’s suspicion.

Elena half grinned again but she saw a possible opening to gain the information that Damon wouldn’t give them and took it, though she was gentle about it.

“And Damon hasn’t been real forthcoming about Alexander. I know he wants you and Damon dead, because apparently Damon tried to kill him once. But why would he do what he did to you to accomplish that?” Elena shook her head still unable to grasp why this Alexander had left Claire alive if he wanted her dead.

“It’s complicated,” Claire said.

“Damon said that too.”

“Alexander wants to cause as much harm as he can before he kills either one of us. You can’t hurt if you’re dead.”

“But why?” Elena asked. Claire shook her head again and drew her legs up. Elena saw the wall go up like a steel shield around her becoming antsy.

“It’s a very long story and I don’t think I can recount it right now without losing it,” Claire said her voice hesitant and wary. Elena nodded and rubbed her arm again comfortingly not wanting to push too hard.

“I understand. Are you going to be okay?”

Claire smiled thinly. “Ask me again tomorrow.”

Elena almost laughed. It was the same thing she had said to Stefan once upon a time when he had asked if she was okay after her parent’s deaths.

“I’ll do that,” Elena promised kindly and quietly left Claire sitting in the middle of Damon’s bed again, contemplating the existential dilemma of thread counts and bourbon.

 

***

Claire sat there on Damon’s bed, now dressed in Elena’s borrowed pants, which were a bit tight, just as Elena had thought they would be, and listened to the sound of Elena descending the stairs while trying to make the whirlwind of emotion in her head slow down. To tame the squall. It didn’t work. She wanted to rip the room apart, and Damon and Alexander. She wanted to sink to the floor and cry until she couldn’t anymore because Vincent was dead. She considered screaming in frustration but that would do nothing for her but trigger a cascade of rage.

Claire had never thought she would see Damon again. Not after what he’d done, not after he’d… Claire made herself stop thinking about it. If she did she’d lose it.

She ran her hand through her hair pushing it out of her face. She took another swig of her bourbon, her arm balanced on her knee as she sipped at it. It helped take the edge off the craving for blood and if she drank enough of it, it might take the edge off her pain and anger…or it might just make it worse.

Claire didn’t know what to think of Elena. She knew she liked her already.  Elena had helped her without knowing her yet knowing what she was, expecting nothing in return. She seemed to be very sweet, compassionate and caring. But she chose Stefan instead of Damon? How could she bear to be with Stefan without being compelled? Claire knew what Stefan had done

She knew how much Stefan’s betrayal had hurt Damon, he’d told her all he had done. How much he hated him, had been hurt by what Stefan had done. Stefan Salvatore was a monster who forced this life on Damon, got the woman he loved killed, and tried to steal her from him while she’d still been alive. Why would Damon even tolerate him to live after what he’d done? Stefan was another Alexander. Claire’s hackles rose just thinking about it.

Alexander. Eighty years. For eighty years she’d thought he was dead, gone. Charred to a crisp that night in Chicago and never able to terrorize her again. They thought Damon had killed him and yet somehow he had survived. How Claire didn’t know. But she did know he had come for her. Only this time he hadn’t wanted what he wanted then, now he just wanted to kill her and Damon. To get revenge. He wanted to hurt them as much as they had hurt him, most of all Damon. He’d already had his revenge on Vincent.

Vincent. Rage and grief warred within her. A hundred years together and he was just gone. He had been the father she had lost. She could still remember her real father as he had turned his back, holding her mother as they quaked in fear of their demon daughter. As men dragged her away, she’d reached for them, even as she felt the stake in her back where her father had tried to kill her and failed. Mama! Papa! She had pleaded and they’d shrank back in horror, repulsed by the monster she’d been made. They hadn’t cared that she was their daughter. That she hadn’t chosen this. They had seen only the vampire. Claire shook off the memory.

She wanted Alexander, oh how she wanted him. She wanted to rip him to pieces bit by bit and listen to him scream. He had taken everything from her. Her life, her family, her light, Vincent. He’d nearly taken Damon. She’d wanted to kill him in 1927, she still wanted to with a fervor that burned so hot it threatened to consume her. It made her shake with the force of it.  To have been victim to him a second time, to be helpless to prevent what he had done all over again. Claire’s nails bit into the flesh of her arm until they bled but the gouges healed almost as soon as they were inflicted. Nightfall, all she had to do was wait for nightfall.

Damon. She should hate him. But she couldn’t. She had tried and it just wasn’t in her despite what he had done. Because she knew why he’d done it. That didn’t make it hurt any less. It had felt so wonderful when she’d cried and she’d felt him wrap his arms around her, stroke her hair. She had been so tempted to given in to him in that shower, to let him back into her life and forget the past. She’d thought she had gotten over it, but she hadn’t and yet… it was Damon. She had never been able to resist him. His wit and charm, the tenderness he hid under his snarky caustic armor and devil-may-care attitude. She hated Stefan for Damon and yet he'd asked her to play nice. Play nice? With a monster that rivaled Alexander?

Why did she care? Damon had gone. Without ever saying goodbye. Why did it matter to her anymore? Did Damon really think he could just waltz back in and pick up where he had left off? And yet…

Claire heard the shuffle of footsteps and the door creaked open. Claire turned to see what had caused the noise. It was Stefan, his brooding forehead and thick eyebrows dominating his face. He was carrying a blood bag and a cup that smelled of coffee. The ubiquitous vampire breakfast. Blood and coffee to warm them. The caffeine helped the blood flow and made them warm to the touch.

“I thought you might be hungry,” Stefan said cordially.  “I’m…,” he began to introduce himself.

“Stefan. Damon’s brother. I know,” Claire said in a flat voice.

Stefan gave her a slight grin.

“I see my reputation precedes me,” he joked. He stepped into the room, letting the door swing the rest of the way open.

“You have no idea,” Claire bit.

“I’m sorry?” Stefan said taken a little aback.

Claire swallowed, counting to ten in her head to resist the urge that swelled within her. She was off kilter, she was angry, she was grieving, she was hurt. She shouldn’t care about what Stefan had done to Damon. She shouldn’t hate him on sight. She had promised Damon she would play nice. But Stefan, for all Claire knew of him, represented the fierce reflection of Alexander and all that he was, all he had done.

“I don’t want anything from you,” Claire said. It came out sounding pathetic and plaintive instead of angry. Stefan misunderstood her tone.

“I didn’t say you did. Look, I know you’re hurting and I know you’re in a bad place right now. I’d like to help you…if you’ll let me,” Stefan said as if he really meant it.

Claire clenched her fists together and tried desperately to keep her temper in check.

“But Damon has been a little sketchy on details when it comes to the guy who dropped you on our door step. I can’t help if I don’t know what to help you with,” Stefan went on, unaware of Claire’s building rage. He came further into the room as if he meant to set the blood bag and the coffee on the nightstand.

“I don’t want help from the likes of you,” Claire growled.

“The likes of me? Okay, I don’t know what your problem is but I’m only trying to help,” Stefan said confused. Claire snapped.

She was off the bed and across the room in an instant of blinding rage fueled speed, sending the half-empty glass of bourbon flying. She grabbed Stefan and pinned him against the wall by his throat, hand clenching fiercely around his windpipe before he had time to react. The blood bag dropped from his hand, bursting and the coffee cup with it. It shattered, sending a splatter of hot coffee flooding over the floor. Claire’s eyes had shifted and her fangs were bared. She hissed threateningly.

“I know what you did to Damon,” Claire growled. “I know what you are.”

Stefan gasped, trying to get a breath through his clamped esophagus. He looked genuinely shocked but Claire was so infuriated she couldn’t see it. She was consumed with rage and anger.

“What are you talking about?” he managed to gasp out, he pushed and sent Claire careening across the room. She hit the floor in a skid but Claire was too angry to be stopped by something so simple.

 “You betrayed him. You forced him to turn.”

Claire vaulted to her feet and attacked Stefan again but he easily threw her off.  She flew backward, crashing through a table. Claire was still weakened by the vervain in her system and she was younger than Stefan, if only by a little. Even with Stefan’s animal blood diet, right now he was stronger than she was.

“Stop. You’re letting your emotions control you. I don’t want to hurt you,” Stefan said.

Claire groaned in pain, incensed and completely out of control. Reason didn’t factor into it. All Claire knew was the need to kill. She picked up a broken leg from the table.

 “You’re just like him,” she snarled.

 

***

Damon came back into the foyer just as Elena got to the bottom of the stairs.  He tucked the glass bottle he had been searching for into his coat.

“So what do you think of Claire when she’s not vampire jerky?” he asked casually. Elena tilted her head a bit.

“I think she’s a mess and I think she’s hurting, a lot. I think she’s kind of balancing on a precipice right now but she seems like a nice person. I’m surprised actually. I was expecting Damon 2.0. She seemed really surprised I helped her.”

Damon chuckled. “Claire’s a good person. I thought you’d like her. She’s had a bad run of it, that’s for sure. But what vampire hasn’t? It kind of goes with the territory.”

“She’s definitely not what I would have imagined as someone you would have had a ‘thing’ with,” Elena said, using Damon’s vernacular since he seemed reluctant to call it anything but that.

“Why? Because she’s nice?” Damon asked with a cocky grin. He stepped forward a pace to stand in front of Elena at the foot of the stairs.

“Yeah. To be honest,” Elena admitted.

Damon smirked, pacing a little as he talked. “Don’t let her fool you. She’s not like Stefan. Claire’s as much ‘vampire’ as am I.  She’s this weird mix of sugar, spice and gasoline, strike a match and you don’t want to see what happens.”

Elena shook her head a bit. “Are you trying to tell me she’s dangerous?”

“She’s a vampire. Of course, she’s dangerous,” Damon said incredulously. He had meandered until he was now standing on the bottom step of the staircase, posed against the railing. Damon did not just stand or lean. He posed. It was an integral part of his personality.  “But not to you. You helped her without reservation. She’d die to protect you now. Claire’s just got a temper on her.”

Damon well remembered the first time he’d seen that temper too. It had almost caused them no end of trouble.

 

***

_Damon was sitting with Claire in his lap on the burgundy velvet Victorian couch in her dressing room during one of their famous after parties. Claire had been playing the lead in ‘Carmen’ that night and while her gypsy ensemble had been scintillating, he found her current attire, a sapphire bead and sequin tulle evening dress that was scandalously low cut, saved only by the sheer panel that mimicked a proper neckline, much preferable. It left her legs deliciously bare._

_He was divested of most of his tuxedo, his jacket, waistcoat and tie cast off somewhere on the other side of the room where a quarter of the orchestra’s woodwind section was busy amusing themselves with spirits and dancing.  Claire’s hands roved under the starched cotton of his open shirt as Damon devoured her mouth._

_Vincent was preoccupied with his own pursuits. Michael had come with them tonight and the auburn haired man’s head was currently tilted back on the chair he was sitting in, while Vincent drank from his wrist._

_Violet was in attendance, as always. She was just too much fun not to invite. Most of her clothes were back on and she was necking with some brown haired oboe player, while the radio played behind them.  All of them were inebriated._

_Damon moved from Claire’s mouth toward her throat, her fingers threading through his tousled hair. He worked his way down her jaw, pausing to whisper in her ear. “What do you say we get the hell out of here? Go somewhere more private?”  He brushed her hair back, looking down into her heated gaze. She smiled._

_“I thought you’d never ask,” she whispered back. Damon waggled his brows suggestively and bent to suckle her neck._

_Suddenly the dressing room door slammed open startling everyone. Michael jerked down his sleeve covering where Vincent had been feeding from him and Vincent wiped his mouth quickly. Damon snapped his head around. Philippe Perrin was standing in the doorway looking furious. His eyes were wild and his formerly immaculate tuxedo rumpled._

_“You!” he growled at what appeared to be no one in particular. Damon laughed. Philippe was a never-ending irritant to them and it seemed their extracurricular activities had managed to annoy him…again. Claire loved to drive him nuts simply because he was an irritation to Vincent._

_“What’s the matter Philippe? Upset we didn’t invite you to the party?” Damon teased. “Pull up a chair, have a drink.”_

_“You aren’t as clever as you think you are!” Philippe yelled._

_“Claire, what did you do now?” Vincent asked chastising._

_“Nothing at all,” she insisted archly. “I’m perfectly innocent.”_

_“Oh I wouldn’t say innocent,” Damon said impishly and kissed her._

_“Did someone change your preference of textiles again when you weren’t looking, Philippe?” Vincent asked mockingly. That had been Vincent’s doing. He had replaced Philippe’s inventory with what he wanted him to use. Philippe still had no idea Vincent had done it._

_“I know what you are!” Philippe raged. He stepped into the room pointing a finger accusingly at Vincent and Damon. Vincent and Damon exchanged a brief glance with Claire. This could be trouble._

_“I’m afraid I’m not sure what you mean,” Vincent said casually. Claire slid off Damon’s lap, freeing him to move if he had to. If Philippe really did know what they were, though how he could have discovered it was beyond Damon, they covered their tracks meticulously, he was a complete fool for telling three vampires he knew what they were. Surely, he wasn’t stupid enough to believe they’d let him keep knowing it._

_“You’re vampires! You and him!” Philippe accused. The humans laughed at him incredulously. The three of them moved. Instantly they had him surrounded. Claire blocking the path out and Damon and Vincent confronting him._

_“And how do you know that?” Damon asked darkly.  He had accused Damon and Vincent, but not Claire. That didn’t make a lot of sense but that wasn’t pertinent just now._

_“I’ve seen you! Your faces. Your eyes! Your teeth!” Philippe sounded utterly terrified at the moment. He was shaking where he stood. Uh huh, confronting a bunch of vampires wasn’t such a bright idea was it? The rest of the party laughed again, they thought this was a joke or that Philippe had lost his mind. Damon’s brow furrowed in confusion. He knew Philippe had never seen them show their natures._

_Vincent stepped toward him, gazing hard into his eyes.  “Come now, Philippe. You’ve been into the catering’s stock. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said smoothly, beginning to compel him. It was the most efficient route. Compel him so they didn’t have to kill him and prove him right. Especially with a room full of people they’d then either have to compel or kill and that equated to a lot of mess clean up. And if anyone caught them… well there was a huge disaster to deal with. If they hadn’t had witnesses Damon would have already snapped the portly Frenchman’s neck and been done with it._

_Philippe snatched something from his coat, he had a wooden stake. Damon had a blink to realize that Philippe really did know they were vampires and how to kill them. “I’ll kill you both!” he snarled about to try and stab Vincent._

_Damon grabbed for his wrist so Vincent could compel him and end this before it got dirty but Claire reacted first. One instant she seemed calm and the next she snapped in a full-blown rage._

_“Will you?” she growled._

_“Claire, no!” Vincent warned but it was too late.  She grabbed Philippe by the hair and jerked his head back, her fangs sinking into his throat viciously. Damon heard the cartilage pop and blood spouted, too much flowing for Claire to drink it all. Not that she was bothering she was just killing him. The humans in the room, save Michael, screamed in terror._

_Great. So much for ending this quietly._

_“Oh my god!” Violet screamed. Terror-stricken she bolted._

_Damon moved, blocking her path. He caught her by the chin. “Everything is fine. Sit down. Be quiet.” She complied in a dazed way, sitting down in a chair but her flight triggered the others. There was mass screaming and people ran. Vincent slammed the door and blocked it. They fell back in fear._

_Now they had a real problem. Damon snatched the person nearest to him and compelled them to forget. “Sit down. Forget what you saw.”_

_Claire dropped Philippe’s body, his throat gaping where she had ripped it out and she was dripping in blood, fangs still bared and eyes still filled with red._

_The oboe player tried to snatch Philippe’s fallen stake and Claire was on him before he could lay a hand on it._

_“Stop her!” Vincent yelled to Damon. Damon zipped across the room and grabbed her before she could get to the oboe player. Vincent disarmed the man and compelled him to be quiet.  Claire was still in a rage, trying to get out of Damon’s grasp and kill the stupidly brave oboe player._

_“Get her out of here. She’ll kill anything she perceives as a threat. She’s rage blind,” Vincent said. “I’ll take care of this.” Damon was horrified. Not that he minded a good murderous rampage once in a while but this could expose them all._

_Damon dragged her out, with her still fuming and ready to kill anyone who tried anything. The few uncompelled humans were cowering against the wall in fear. Damon left Vincent to it._

_In the end, Vincent had compelled all those present to forget it had ever happened and they had disposed of Philippe’s body. Damon didn’t blame Claire a bit for killing the stage director but the unthinking way she had done it had shocked him. Philippe had been no real threat. Three vampires against one puny non-hunter human? No contest. But her anger had overwhelmed her when he’d threatened Damon and Vincent. Vincent hadn’t been kidding about Claire’s temper when she was angry. If they’d known then what they knew later…things might have turned out differently._

***

 

“Oh,” Elena said trying to decide what to make of Damon’s revelation about Claire’s temper. He almost sounded proud of the fact that Claire was as ‘vampire’ as he was.

Damon heard glass and ceramic shatter from above them, pulled from his memory. He straightened, looking up. There was a heavy thud. “Uh oh,” he said. “Not good.”

Elena heard it too and looked up trying to figure out what it was. “What’s going on?” she asked. But Damon didn’t answer he spun and bolted up the stairs in the direction of his room like a shot. “Claire Marie!” he yelled. Elena raced to follow him.

Damon darted down the hall and through his open bedroom door just in time to see Claire barreling into Stefan with the broken chair leg. She followed him to the ground and plunged the leg downward, her face a mask of utter fury. Stefan caught her wrists and wrenched her sideways, flipping her over on her back so he was on top of her.

“You don’t even know me,” he insisted in vexed confusion. He jerked the stake away from her, throwing it out of her reach.

“I know enough,” she seethed. She roared at him like an animal and shoved him over pinning him beneath her again. She tried to drive her bare hand through Stefan’s chest and rip his heart from his ribcage. Stefan yelled in pain.

Crap. She really was trying to kill him. She didn’t have the strength right now and Stefan could easily have ended the fight if he had been willing to hurt her back but she was damn sure trying.

“Break it up!” Damon barked. He moved, grabbing Claire by the shoulder and flinging her.

She went flying a third time but no sooner did she hit the floor than she snatched the cast off table leg up and sprinted. Damon rounded, catching her as she advanced and slamming her roughly against the wall, his arm across her upper chest. He had the arm wielding the stake forced down and immobile. She fought him, rage blind.  But Damon easily overpowered her. Stefan, she might be able to throw around some but Damon was at full strength.

“He’s not Alexander, Claire. He’s my brother,” Damon said trying to bring her back to herself.  She didn’t seem to hear him, snarling and trying to get out of his grasp to Stefan who was picking himself up off the floor coughing and sputtering from the assault. The punctures from Claire’s fingernails, comparatively shallow and inconsequential for vampire inflicted wounds, were already healing, leaving only a circle of small holes in his shirt and some blood.

“Claire. It’s me. It’s Damon,” Damon tried to soothe.  She blinked, seeming to register his presence. “It’s Damon,” he said again.

“He’s just like him.,” Claire seethed.

“He’s _not_ Alexander.,” Damon reiterated. “I don’t need you to defend me. You need to calm down.”

Claire looked back at him defiantly, panting and muscles coiled to fight but then she subsided. Slowly Claire’s eyes faded back to normal and her fangs retracted. Damon sighed in relief. When Claire lost it. She really lost it and getting her back wasn’t always so easy.

“I thought I told you to play nice?” he said.  Claire glared back at him as if she wasn’t really very repentant for what she’d done.

“Don’t _ever_ do that again,” Damon said, his voice hard and his eyes cold. He meant it. She hadn’t been playing when she’d tried to kill Stefan despite being too weak to carry it out and he wasn’t playing now.

Elena pelted in, having finally caught up with Damon’s much faster journey. She looked around, saw the mess the bedroom was in and what was going on.

“Oh my god,” she gasped and ran to Stefan’s side. “Are you okay?” She gave Claire an angry, incredulous look. A moment ago she had thought Claire was a nice person and then she attacks Stefan with no provocation?

“I’m fine,” Stefan insisted. “Claire’s just upset and her emotions got the better of her.”

“So that makes her attacking you okay?” Elena railed, checking her boyfriend over for some unseen damage.

“Claire just lost control that’s all,” Stefan said.

Claire had begun to relax under Damon’s grip. “Can you behave if I let you go?” he asked. Claire swallowed hard once and nodded jerkily. Slowly Damon let up on her, careful in case it was a ruse so she could take another shot at Stefan. She didn’t.

“Apologize,” he said waving at Stefan. Claire didn’t look particularly happy with the idea. But Damon gave her a look. She relented.

 “I’m sorry,” Claire said in a small voice. Damon still didn’t think she _was_ sorry, he knew what it sounded like when her voice was genuine and that wasn’t it, but he let it go. It would be bad to provoke her just now.

“Happens to the best of us every once in a while,” Stefan said brushing it off but there was a definite disquiet in the air.  He gave Damon a knowing look.

Claire had revealed that she knew what Stefan had done to Damon and that gave Damon away. Damon had heard everything Claire and Stefan had said, even though Elena hadn’t been able to. He knew Stefan was going to call him on it the first chance he got. Well, Damon just wouldn’t give him the chance.

Elena still didn’t look happy but she resigned herself to the matter. The vampires in the room understood this more than she did. Frankly, she wouldn’t have been so forgiving but then again… she wasn’t a vampire.

Damon glanced at Stefan, his eyes lingering on his perforated shirt. He grinned slightly.  “She got you good, brother,” Damon said.

Stefan looked down at himself and plucked at his shirt. “Yeah. It’s been a while since someone tried to rip my heart out,” he observed nonchalantly. He looked to Elena. “Just, uh, let me change shirts and we’ll go. We’re already late.”

“I should go too. I need to see a witch about a vampire,” Damon agreed. Claire looked at him considering.  As they all started to leave the room, Claire followed. Stefan and Elena in the lead with Elena mother-henning over Stefan despite him insisting he was fine. She threw an occasion angry glare over her shoulder at Claire.

“I’m going with you,” Claire insisted.

“You tried to kill my brother. You’re grounded,” Damon said. He really was a little angry about that but at the same time he understood. And if he were honest, he might be partially responsible since he had intentionally been pushing her buttons earlier and Stefan had no doubt been listening to every word said between them in the hope of gleaning the information Damon wouldn’t tell him so he had known Claire was edgy and pushed anyway. But Claire could drive him nuts when she tried.  Damon was playing with fire and eventually he was going to get burned. “Why don’t you clean up the mess _you_ made of _my_ room?” He started down the stairs again, Claire on his heels.

“You aren’t going without me.”

Damon paused on the staircase and turned back. “I’m not?”

“He killed Vincent.”

Damon sighed. Hard-headed, stubborn... he stopped the mental litany of adjectives he could come up with to describe Claire and resumed his trek down the stairs. She followed right behind him.

“And you want his head on a stick. I know. But you’re not exactly running on all cylinders yet, what with the vervain still in your system. Last night you weren’t worth anything, now you’re only worth something.”

“He killed Vincent,” Claire said gruffly.

Stefan and Elena had made it downstairs and Stefan had filched a clean shirt from a stack of laundry in the living room that hadn’t made it into drawers yet. He stripped off his torn one and donned the new one.

“Vincent was my friend too, ya know,” Damon said.

“You had a friend?” Stefan teased.

“Shut up, Stefan,” Damon retorted. Stefan laughed at him.

“I’m going,” Claire insisted.

“You’re being hard-headed again,” Damon warned.

“Gonna snap my neck again for it?” Claire spat. Damon stopped dead. That barb was well aimed and it hurt.  He turned around slowly, his eyes flashed anger. Stefan was watching with interest and Elena had joined him, her nose still out of joint about the fight.

“Alright,” Damon said lightly. “Come on.” He bounced down the stairs and headed for the door.  Claire bounced down after him.

Damon opened the door. Sunlight poured in and Claire jumped backward rapidly to avoid it, shielding her head. But the rays never touched her, never burned. Damon was careful to make sure he didn’t let enough in to flood the whole foyer.

“Oh, wait. That’s right you can’t,” Damon shot, holding his left hand up and wriggling his fingers so his daylight ring was obvious. Claire glared at him with utter contempt. Good. Let her. She could hate him for all he cared, he told himself. He didn’t mind being the bad guy because at the end of the day… she’d still be alive.

“You’re an ass, Damon,” Claire said, obviously hurt. That made him wince. Damon knew why that had hurt her and he’d said it anyway.  It was mean spirited in the extreme and he knew it.

“I know,” Damon said deadpan. He realized he was forgetting something and strode back to Claire. He withdrew the bottle from his jacket pocket and uncapped it, holding it out to her. She looked at it blankly.

“I need some of your blood.”

“You’re kidding right?” Claire bit.

“Not even a little bit,” Damon said firmly and made a ‘give it to me’ motion with one hand. Claire looked at him with disbelief and snorted shaking her head. But her fangs came out and she nipped the side of her hand, squeezing the requested blood into the bottle.

Damon capped the bottle. “Thank you,” he said breezily, tucking it into his pocket and then herded Elena and Stefan out the door. “Come along kiddies. Don’t want to be too late for school.” Then, sweetly, he threw back at Claire, who was still standing back from the sun, glaring daggers at him.

“Make yourself at home.”

The door shut behind him with her glowering at him. Damon told himself it didn’t bother him. That he didn’t care. He pretended he didn’t look down at his daylight ring and swallow past the knot in his throat as he made his way to his car. And he denied fervently to himself that what he really wanted to do was turn around and apologize to her.


	4. Chapter 4

Elena shook her head and shoved her feet forward in the tiny leg space of Stefan’s red 1963 Porsche 356B Karmann Coupe. “I can’t believe she did that. I can’t believe you’re okay with it.” she complained.

“I’m not okay with it,” Stefan said as he drove behind Damon’s Camaro to Mystic Falls High. “But I might have brought some of it on myself.”

“She attacked you without provocation, Stefan. You helped save her life. I don’t understand,” Elena said exasperated.  “She was perfectly nice to me.”

“Yeah well. You didn’t poke her with a stick. I did,” Stefan said turning a corner. He could see Damon ahead of them, his black head focused on the road and more than once trying to make the light before they could so he could outpace them, get to Bonnie before Stefan interfered or asked questions Damon didn’t want to answer.

“How?” Elena asked.  Stefan titled his head back and forth before answering.

“I’ve been listening to their conversations.”

“Stefan,” Elena admonished. “What happened to me getting it out of him?”

Stefan shrugged. “I still didn’t know if she was a danger to you. Or if Damon’s impulsive streak had put you in danger because of this Alexander wanting revenge. So I did what I had to.”

Elena just looked at him in a chastising way.

“Very ‘Damon’ thing to do, I know,” Stefan said. “She and Damon had a fight this morning and it shed some light on their association. Not enough to be definitive but enough to tell that there’s more to this than Damon pissing off another vampire and him wanting revenge. And I heard your conversation with her so I knew she was edgy, I knew she and Damon had a fight and then I went in there and pushed anyway and it backfired. Of course, I didn’t know she hated me. I might have rethought things if I had.”

“That still gave her no right to try to kill you,” Elena insisted.

“No, it doesn’t. But she couldn’t have killed me Elena, she’s still too weak. I could have stopped her but I didn’t want to hurt her. Don’t judge her too harshly. Somebody she loved died. She’s been tortured. Vervained. She’s hurt, angry, grieving. All your emotions are heightened when you’re a vampire. When we hurt, we really hurt. Anger becomes rage. When you're sad, you're in despair. Grief. Loss. It can cripple you or make you snap. That's why so many of us turn our emotions off. Flip our humanity switch. It just becomes... too overwhelming. At least she hasn’t done that,” Stefan explained.

“But you didn’t do anything to her,” Elena insisted.

“No. But apparently Damon told her what I did in the past and she hates me for it.”

“She doesn’t even know you,” Elena said.

“Yeah, exactly. Think about. If you hadn’t known me before you found out about all of it would you have liked me? If you’ll recall Damon told you counting on exactly that even though you did know me and it almost worked,” Stefan reasoned.

Elena shook her head again. They were about a block from school and Damon was getting progressively more agitated that he hadn’t been able to punch through a light before it turned yet. “But still. Why attack you?”

“Convenient target?” Stefan speculated. “But it’s more than that. I think you were right. Damon told her I’m not Alexander and she kept saying I was just like him.  I think Alexander is the one who turned her and I don’t think it was her idea. Combine that with the fact that she knows I made Damon turn and you see where she was coming from?”

“You were a proxy for Alexander,” Elena realized.

“Something like that,” Stefan agreed. “Damon confided in her during a time when he still hated me, wanted revenge and I think she hates me for Damon. They haven’t seen each other in eighty years. She doesn’t know we’ve got past it, sort of.”

“Damon doesn’t confide in anyone,” Elena said. “Unless it gets him what he wants.”

“Yeah, exactly. He confided in her and it wouldn’t have gotten him anything but a sympathetic ear, it’s not as if he set her on me. In fact I think he was in love with her, maybe he still is,” Stefan said.

“What? But what about Katherine and his whole obsession with freeing her?” Elena said.

“Damon’s still,” Stefan paused with a wry grin. “I was going to say ‘human’ but you get my meaning. And you know how Damon is about love.”

“Yeah,” Elena breathed as that sunk in. “Oh, wow.”

“Do you think she loves him?” she added.

“She was willing to try and kill me for what I did to him,” Stefan said as an obscure way of saying yes.

There was a moment of silence as Elena thought about that. “What tipped you off?”

“The ‘twisted Phantom of the Opera’ comment along with the other snatches I’ve been able to get.”

Elena looked at Stefan for an explanation. 

“I’m surprised you haven’t studied it in school. ‘Phantom of the Opera’ started as a novel, then a play and a musical and more recently as a whole slew of movies. I’m partial to the Andrew Lloyd Webber one myself but I’m getting side tracked.” Stefan said. Elena listened closely.

“Anyway, Cliff Notes version. It starts out with this opera singer named Christine singing in the Paris Opera House. But little did Christine know that under the opera house lived Erik. A disfigured former opera singer who had been listening to her sing every night, fallen in love with her and become obsessed. He wasn’t the nicest person though. He was hateful and cruel because no one had ever cared about him, everyone shunned him as a monster, afraid of him. He extorted money from the opera house, terrorized people. Christine tolerated him though because he offered to teach her how to sing like an angel. She had no feelings for him.

“However, Erik didn’t see that. He kidnapped her to keep her for himself but she escaped. Christine’s childhood friend and the man she loved, Raoul, tried to take her away, to save her from Erik. But when Erik found out that Christine was in love with Raoul and she was leaving, he kidnapped her again and threatened to kill Raoul and everyone in the opera house in an attempt to make her stay with him.

“He was convinced she’d love him if only he could keep her to himself.  He promised to let them all go if she’d marry him. So having no other option, she agreed, planning to kill herself as soon as they were wed.  He still tried to kill Raoul but Christine begged, saying she wouldn’t kill herself after she married him, she’d stay with him and Erik let Raoul go. Later, alone with Erik, she let him kiss her on the forehead and he was so overcome with emotion that she didn’t reject him that he released her, telling her to go marry Raoul who she really loved and we got a happy ending. I think Damon is this story’s Raoul.”

“Oh my God,” Elena said, she pushed her hair behind her ears as Stefan pulled into the parking lot of the high school in search of a parking space. Damon zipped through and ignored finding one, parking at the curb and getting out.

“But Damon said this is a twisted version so I’m betting there’s no redeemed monster at the end of this one,” Stefan said taking the first place he could find and turning the car off. He and Elena got out and headed for the building, ducking around the throng of other students in their haste to follow Damon.

“Because the original wasn’t twisted enough?” Elena said.  Stefan chuckled.

“It’s a classic love story.”

“I don’t think you can call that love,” Elena said as they pushed through the heavy steel doors into the school. Damon wasn’t far ahead of them, his head above the crowd as he searched for Bonnie.

“Don’t look at me. I didn’t write it. But it’s actually an epic romance,” Stefan said as they wove through the press of bodies, his eye ever on the lookout for his brother or Bonnie.

“So Damon tried to kill Alexander to save Claire but Alexander survived and now he wants to kill Damon because he ‘took’ Claire and kill Claire because she rejected him in favor of Damon.  Only he wants to hurt them both as much as possible first. That’s why he hasn’t killed Claire already. He wants Damon to see her die. So he can take Claire from Damon the same as Damon did from him,” Elena said.

“Probably,” Stefan agreed.

“The irony,” Elena said with a sigh. Damon was now in the same position Stefan had been in when Damon had been set on taking revenge for what Stefan had done with Katherine.

“It’s not lost on me, trust me.”

“So what are we going to do?”  Elena asked as they went. Stefan never looked at her, he always had his eye on the back of Damon’s bobbing head ahead of them. It was class change and the halls were wall to wall with people.

“I am going to call him on it as soon as I’m sure,” Stefan said.

“You’re not sure?” Elena said.

“Well it is Damon. There could be more to it and it seems like he and Claire have their own issues. You know Damon. He has a habit of sabotaging things. But you heard him. Alexander is older than Katherine.  He’s going to need help to kill him and he’s going to get it like it or not.”

“Why doesn’t he just tell us the truth?” Elena said.

“And admit he cares? Admit that he’s vulnerable? Admit he actually feels something?” Stefan shook his head. “He’s too afraid of getting hurt.”

Elena sighed in a long-suffering way just as Stefan saw Damon snag Bonnie by her arm, taking her by surprise and dragging her into an empty classroom. Stefan picked up his pace, reaching back for Elena’s hand.

“Come on, Damon found Bonnie.”

 

***

Damon hastened through the crowd, knowing Stefan was doggedly following with Elena in tow. He could have just let them catch up and done this with their help but his pride wouldn’t let him…and his guilt.  So Damon plowed along, finally catching sight of the long fall of dark curling iron waves that Bonnie bore. They bounced jovially as she walked to her next class, her textbook clutched to her yellow synthetic silk blouse.  Damon veered to the side of the hall and waylaid her, grabbing her arm.  Bonnie jumped on contact.

“I need your help,” he said.

“Get off me!” Bonnie protested in outrage, her dark green eyes flashing malevolently at him. 

Damon ignored it keeping a tight hold on her and dared a burst of speed, flash stepping into the nearest empty classroom, pulling Bonnie in with him and shutting the door. He turned the lock.

Bonnie had freed one arm and had begun to extend it toward Damon, her face contorted in fury.

“Do not mind whammy me again,” Damon warned. It was actually a fairly useless order. Bonnie, being a witch, could ‘mind whammy’ a vampire easily. It was pain inflicted by using magic to rapidly and repeatedly causing the vessels in the vampire’s brain to burst. A domino effect of aneurysms that were excruciatingly painful though not deadly.

Bonnie’s mouth tightened as she considered the demand. She lowered her hand and slammed down her textbooks on the nearest desk, crossing her arms over her chest and cocking out one hip, defiantly.  “What do you want?”

Well, this was off to a rocky start, Damon thought. Not that he had expected anything else. Bonnie hated him to an unusual extent. The only reason she ever did anything he asked was because it was for the greater good. Witches were so judgy.

“How long is this class going to be empty?” Damon asked, peering through the small window in the classroom door. The herd in the hall was thinning out and Stefan and Elena were headed straight for him.

Bonnie looked over her shoulder at the chalkboard. It read ‘English Literature II’. “Two hours. Mrs. Feldman has her planning period and then lunch,” Bonnie said curtly. Her foot was tapping impatiently on the linoleum floor.

“Good,” Damon said turning around and approaching Bonnie pleadingly though his natural arrogance bled through and made it less than convincing.  She eyed him. “I need you to find a vampire for me.”

Bonnie sighed. “I already told Stefan I can’t find Klaus without something of his to cast the spell with,” she began assuming Damon was coming to ask her to find the Original vampire everyone was concerned about.

“I know that. I’m not trying to find Klaus. I’m trying to find someone else,” Damon said.

“Who?” Bonnie asked, some of her agitation ebbing as Damon was sure she imagined a new vampire in Klaus’s service after Elena. Elena was her best friend and for her she’d do just about anything.

“His name is Alexander and he is very dangerous,” Damon explained, hoping to sway her with the very true implication that Alexander was a threat to all of Mystic Falls without mentioning the part where he wanted Damon dead. Bonnie wouldn’t do it then, just out of spite.

“Is he after Elena?” Bonnie asked worriedly.  Damon flinched. Truth or lie? If he lied and she caught him, he was screwed. If he didn’t find Alexander by nightfall…. As much as it went against his nature, Damon told the truth.

“No.”

Bonnie shook her head. “Then why do you need to find him?”

Damon rolled his eyes. Why couldn’t she just once do one little spell without having to pick apart the moral fiber of why Damon wanted her to do it? Just once?  “He wants to kill me.”

Bonnie brighten considerably.  “Imagine that.”

“You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” Damon snipped.

“Why not?” Bonnie pipped. “Some random act of violence coming back to haunt you? Suddenly worried you’re going to get killed because you don’t have a conscience?”

Damon gritted his teeth and trembled with suppressed anger at her mocking. Sure, she hated him. Sure, he’d done some possibly morally reprehensible things. But she didn’t have to be this way about it. He’d tried to make it up to her how many times now? He’d proved himself how often? He severely lamented the fact that a vampire couldn’t compel a witch.

“Please,” he said. “It’s not just me he wants to kill.” Bonnie’s brow furrowed, waiting for him to elaborate. Damon clenched his jaw. He did not want to explain this. He really didn’t, because once he start one question led to another and that went straight to the hard truth which Damon didn’t want to face. Even if he already knew it as well as he knew his own name. Plus, even if he was wholly forth coming the chances Bonnie would believe him were none existent. She thought him too depraved for such things. 

“He wants to kill a woman named Claire too.”

Bonnie’s eyebrow arched up sharply. That had intrigued her. Yes! Score one for Team Damon.

“You’re protecting a human?”

And he fumbles the ball. “She’s a vampire,” he admitted. Bonnie nodded her head.

“And does this connect to Klaus and Elena in any way?”

“No,” Damon admitted gruffly.

“Sorry Damon,” Bonnie said shaking her head. She scooped up her textbooks and made for the door. “I told you before. The only reason I’m helping you with Klaus is because he’s after Elena. You made your bed now lie in it.”

Damon dashed around her cutting her off. Bonnie came up short, and glared at him. “Claire’s a good person. She’s not like me,” Damon said in entreaty.

“Has she ever killed anyone?” Bonnie retorted hotly.

Now that was a completely unfair question. She knew already that Claire was a vampire. Of course she had killed someone before.

“That’s not fair, Bonnie,” Damon began to argue.

Bonnie side stepped him, nose in the air. “She’s a vampire.”

Damon grabbed her arm, desperate to get her to do the locator spell for lack of another option. He pulled the bottle of Claire’s blood from his jacket and pressed it into her hand, speaking rapidly. “Alexander turned Claire. This is her blood. I know you need something personal or the blood of a relative to find him. It’s the closest thing I could get…”

He didn’t get further. Almost as soon as he had her by the arm Bonnie whammied him. His head exploded with blinding pain and Damon sank to his knees on the floor, gripping his head, eyes clenched shut. Somehow he managed to talk through it between groans of pain as Bonnie stood there and caused him to writhe on the floor. “Claire’s a good person. I swear she’s not like me.”

“She’s a vampire Damon. She kills people,” Bonnie intoned flatly. Damon’s head pain got worse.

“Ah!” he gasped. “Alexander’s already killed one human. He won’t stop there. He’s insane.” Damon said trying to persuade her a different way.  She was all about protecting the innocent humans of Mystic Falls from the horrible vampires infesting it. Save Stefan, he seemed to be beyond reproach just because he ate bunnies. She failed to notice that the humans were as often as not as bad or worse than the vampires. Being human seemed to be the only requirement for ‘innocence’ here. Or being Stefan.

Bonnie relented a bit and some of his pain subsided as the classroom door’s knob crunched, the lock broken, and Stefan came through it with Elena.

“He’s telling the truth, Bonnie. We do need to find Alexander,” Stefan said. Bonnie looked from Stefan to Damon. Reluctantly she released Damon. Who collapsed back on the floor panting a moment.

“Do you have to do this every time we meet?” Damon complained weakly as he climbed to his feet. 

Bonnie cast him a caustic look. “I don’t know,” Bonnie snipped. “It has a certain appeal.”

Damon glared back. Just great. Bonnie wouldn’t help him, but Stefan says one little thing and she seriously considers it. Stefan had to have heard him groveling. His baby brother was never going to let him live it down and he knew it. This just kept getting more complicated and more vexing by the moment.

“Bonnie,” Elena appealed to her friend.

 Bonnie’s shoulders slumped in resignation. For Elena she’d do it. For Stefan she would. Damon could go to Hell for all she cared. “Can I make him grovel more first?” she begged.

“Bonnie,” Stefan said in an affectionately tolerant but chastising tone.

“Oh fine,” Bonnie relented. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”

Stefan shook his head at her in mild amusement. Damon continued glaring at her.

“I’m so glad giving me a string of aneurysms is amusing to you.” Bonnie gave him a look. “Now if you’re going to help me can we get on with it?”

“I need a map and a couple of candles,” Bonnie said curtly.

Damon produced them from his inside jacket pockets. A neatly folded map of Mystic Falls and two small white candles, the cheap votive kind you could find at the drug store. Damon always came prepared.

Bonnie unfolded the map on a nearby desk and set the candles on one corner. “I can’t promise this will work.  Even though the vampire you are looking for turned Claire, she’s not really related to him. Her blood might be useless.”

Stefan and Elena looked at each other knowingly.

“It’ll work. It has too. Besides can’t you give it a little more ‘umph’? You’re wielding the power of a hundred witches,” Damon insisted fervently. It had to work because if it didn’t, Damon didn’t know what he was going to do. Alexander could be anywhere, there was no telling what he would do next, who he would kill and slim chance of finding him unless he wanted to be found. If Damon didn’t find him… he cut that thought off before it finished.

Bonnie had the power of a hundred dead witches at her beck and command now. Power Damon had helped her get incidentally, in order to have the power to take down Klaus when he finally showed up. The least the ungrateful little witch could do was do this one spell for him without being such a judgy snob about it. Surely one little locator spell would work even with such tenuous ingredients, Damon assured himself.

“I’ll try,” Bonnie said, lighting the candles with a thought. Then she uncapped the bottle and poured Claire’s blood on the map in a small pool. Damon waited tensely as Bonnie shut her eyes and held her hand over the map. Stefan and Elena were silent, watching and giving each other significant glances from time to time that made Damon’s neck hair bristle.

He knew they were on the track, but if he could lie to himself he could damn well lie to them about this. He wasn’t about to admit to anything other than his usual impulsive anger born murderous (and this time failed) tirades. He wasn’t going to give his brother the satisfaction of being right. He couldn’t.

Bonnie began to chant low under her breath. “Phasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Viras Sequita.”

Claire’s blood moved, contracting into a tight bead where Bonnie had poured it. Damon looked from the map to Bonnie.

“Come on. You’re super witch now. It can’t be that hard,” Damon prodded.

“Shhh,” Elena admonished. Damon clamped his mouth shut. Bonnie’s forehead was knotted with concentration, flexing as she put more power into the spell. The blood bead quivered but didn’t move, didn’t track across the map of Mystic Falls.

“Come on,” Damon whispered to himself.

Bonnie tried harder, a breeze had started to build up in the room from nowhere, the candles’ flames guttering wildly and in danger of blowing out if not for the fact that they were magic born.

“Saguines Ementas Asten Mihan Ega Petous,” Bonnie chanted. The spell’s chant was a constant murmured loop of the words. Bonnie winced as if she were trying to force something, her head moving in an almost imperceptible side-to-side motion once.

“It has to work,” Damon muttered.

Bonnie opened her eyes and looked at them. The breeze died. The candles went out. She shook her head and shrugged.

“I’m sorry. It’s not working.”

Damon’s entire body tensed. He took a step forward toward her, pale blue eyes fevered. “No. Try something else. Wave your magic wand, hocus pocus, crazy vampire findus mindus or whatever,” Damon insisted.

“There is nothing else, Damon,” Bonnie said.

“Don’t tell me that,” Damon growled.

Anger flashed through Damon like a lightning strike. He started shaking, his body tight as whipcord, hands clenching and unclenching by his side as his upper lip quivered. His teeth were gritted so hard it made his jaw ache. He wanted to kill Bonnie. He wanted to kill something, anything.

 That spell had been the only thing he had. Now he didn’t know what he was going to do and Claire… he wanted to kill Bonnie for not giving him the answer he wanted. He was _going_ to kill Bonnie. No. What would that get him? Killing Bonnie wouldn’t solve his problem and they needed her against Klaus. No. He wouldn’t kill her. But his anger and frustration had built until he couldn’t repress it.

Damon’s fury burst from him in a sudden roar of anger. He lashed out, punching the painted cement brick wall next to the door so hard it shattered and cracked. Elena and Bonnie jumped back to avoid the bits of block that flew across the room with a yip of surprise. Stefan didn’t move but he was looking Damon up and down like a teacher who was about to ask Damon to stay after class. Damon stood there his fists clenched again as he actively fought down his temper.

Stefan uncrossed his arms and gave Damon a pointed look. “Elena, you and Bonnie go on to class. I’ll be there in a little while. I need a minute with my brother.”

Elena nodded and together she and Bonnie scrambled from the room. Damon’s temper was notorious. But Damon’s manifested when he was hurt or angry. Not just when he was angry.  Damon could if he chose, on most occasions, control his, unlike Claire. That is assuming that he wanted to control it. And Damon had enough control not to kill someone when it would cost him or expose him. Usually.  Plus, he was far more conniving about it. He plotted and schemed; Claire just snapped and killed the object of her fury without hesitation.

The door clicked shut and Stefan stepped around Damon, who was still fighting his temper. 

“Now what are you going to do?”

Damon looked up at him seething and frustrated. “I don’t know yet.”

Stefan nodded loosely and leaned back on one of the desks, hands gripping the edge casually. “So… you and Claire, that whole thing this morning? Lot of unresolved angst, huh? She _sure_ doesn’t like me.”

Damon narrowed his eyes at Stefan and smirked. He knew Stefan was planning on backing him in a corner and while he was not happy Claire’s temper had led to her feebly attempting to kill his brother there was a certain amount of epicaricacy in it. He and Stefan had a love/hate relationship at the best of times.

“What’s the matter? Surprised she didn’t fall at your feet? Profess her undying love for Saint Stefan the moment she met you?” Damon snipped.

Stefan shook his head.  “No. I’m not. I don’t even like me for what I did. I regret it every day. What surprises me is that _you_ told her.”

“Why? Because it was some big secret? I told her. So what?” Damon said flippantly, turning partially toward the door. Stefan moved with him, hovering antagonistically.

“Yeah it was. For you. Telling Claire wouldn’t have gotten you anything and you don’t open up to people, you push them away. Elena was right,” he said in an almost accusatory tone.

Damon made an incredulous face and shrugged, scoffing.  “I told Elena how I met Claire in a bar and we had a few rolls in the hay for fun. What does Elena know?”

“That there was something more to this. Your reaction when you realized it was Claire? The apology? How mad you got at me back at the house? You and her arguing? How furious you are that Bonnie couldn’t find Alexander?” Stefan dug. 

Damon snarled and rounded on his brother, standing toe to toe with him menacingly.  He gripped the edges of Stefan’s jacket, dragging him closer. “Here’s what you seem to be forgetting. You‘ve been eavesdropping on everything we say, so I know you heard. Vincent was Claire’s Lexi. He was like a father to her. Thing is, Claire is like me. She’s one hundred percent vampire. When she gets over being shell shocked… she’s not going to cry into a pint of _Haagen-Dazs_ and sing _‘Amazing Grace’_. She’s going to be pissed. Then we’re going to have two vengeful vampires  on our hands and it isn’t going to be pretty.”

Stefan looked back at him unflinching. “You’re a pragmatist, Damon.  So why stop her? She kills him, he can’t come after you.”

            “I’m just trying to prevent this from becoming a bigger problem. You don’t know, Claire. You think I’m impulsive? You saw her. Claire doesn’t just get mad. She goes into a blind rage and anything in her way dies. Vincent was all she had. If she turns her humanity off because she can’t handle losing him, I don’t want to think what she might do,” Damon insisted. He still had Stefan in his grip and his fingers were starting to make the leather creak as his grip tightened.

            “Exactly. You’re protecting her. That’s why you’re doing this during the day. Not like it matters to you if he kills a few people you don’t care about or if she does. You’re trying to find him before dark because you want to get him before she can go after him,” Stefan said confidently.

Damon’s lip quivered. He let go of his brother.  “No, I’m not. Claire’s a big girl, she can do what she wants as long as it doesn’t get me killed.”

Stefan smoothed his jacket. “Then why won’t you tell me and Elena why Alexander has waited eighty years to come after you?”

            “I was embarrassed I didn’t kill him the first time,” Damon put off. Dangerously close to the truth, too close. Much too close. If Stefan or Elena voiced the truth Damon wasn’t sure he could keep lying to himself.  He waved Stefan off.  Time to get out of here.

            “You don’t do embarrassed. Try again. You claim you aren’t protecting her. Which would mean you don’t care about her but that’s exactly what it looks like you’re doing, so why?” Stefan gouged unrelentingly. Damon briefly contemplated why he hadn’t just broken his little brother’s neck before now to make him shut up.  Damon turned to leave and Stefan grabbed him, snatching him back around. Damon looked down at Stefan’s hand darkly.

            “Alexander is her sire.  Vincent was just a father figure.  So where does that leave you? Her and Alexander were never together were they? _‘Twisted Phantom of the Opera’._ You didn’t take her away from him, you didn’t take her away from anybody. But Alexander didn’t see it that way did he? He came after her.  And you tried to kill him to protect her,” Stefan said.  His face softened and he let go of Damon’s jacket. He looked touched and pitying at the same time.

“You were in love with her. Maybe you still are.”

Stefan had said it. He’d just put it out there bluntly.  Damon blinked and swallowed hard. He backed away from his brother. 

“I never loved her,” he lied. He turned sharply on his heel and headed for the door. He wouldn’t let Stefan stop him again, he had to get away from his truth delving brother.

“You told her your most painful secrets,” Stefan countered smugly but not unkindly. Damon ignored it.

“I have things to do. Have a nice day at school, Stefan,” he said and walked out the door, slamming it behind him. It startled a few straggling, tardy students and faculty members who watched him stalk from the building with curious confusion.

 

***

Claire stood there glaring at the front door for a while. She fought with her hurt, her grief and her anger, each warring for dominance. Hurt finally won, for the moment. She was inept right now, she knew it and Damon had made sure to drive the point home. She couldn’t walk in daylight, he could. He’d known how much that would hurt.

            She knew he had been lashing out because she knew Damon. She’d seen him lash out before. She had lost control of her emotions and tried to kill Stefan. But she couldn’t find it in her just now to feel guilty for the act itself. She was sorry she’d done it, if only because it appeared that Damon had reconciled to some extent with his brother and she knew how much Damon had missed the relationship he had with him.  But she couldn’t feel guilt for it. Stefan was too much like Alexander, but then how had he convinced Damon—whose vehement hate and anger for him had run bone deep—that he was trust worthy? How did he have someone as compassionate as Elena as his girlfriend?

 Claire couldn’t wrap her head around it just now. Nor did she want to. She was agitated, her feet itching to move. To go out that door, hunt Alexander down and rip his heart out of his chest. Now. But she couldn’t. Until night fell she was as much a prisoner here as a criminal in iron chains. One thing Claire lacked was patience when she wanted to act on something, that and supreme absence of control when it came to her raging temper.  Vincent had always lamented her lack of temperance. 

She couldn’t stand still so she wandered, trying to distract herself for the moment by exploring the house she found herself confined in. Damon said ‘make yourself at home’. Well, she would, she thought a little vindictively his barb still stinging. She meandered through the rooms, taking in the old Victorian furnishings, the sumptuous rugs and artwork that populated the place, careful to side step the errant shafts of sunlight that sometimes slipped through the heavy drapes. Some of them cut off her exploration all together, wide swathes of sunlight acting as a barrier she dared not pass through.

The house almost seemed out of time save for the few modern bits here and there. A TV in the sitting room. An Ipod speaker dock. Coffee pot and toaster in the kitchen.  A desktop computer in the study amid the many shelves packed with first edition hardbacks older than she was.

The Salvatore home was different than her own. The one she shared, had shared, with Vincent in Los Angeles. It was just as rich but the furnishings were modern, a testament to Claire’s own trendy and expensive mindset. The only room here that approached her own taste was Damon’s. 

She stood there looking at it from the doorway. It was a mess now. The table she’d fallen through strewn across the floor in bits. Everything that had been on it scattered like fallen leaves. She frowned. She hadn’t meant to snap the way she had. She didn’t feel guilty for the act per say but she had promised Damon she’d play nice. She sighed.

Before long she found herself doing exactly what Damon had barked at her to do. Picking up the mess she had made. She gathered the broken bits of table and put them in the fireplace in the living room. They weren’t worth anything but kindling now. She mopped up the busted blood bag and threw away the shattered coffee cup. Why had Stefan done that? Why pretend to care? What would it gain him?

Claire collected the things that the table had previously held, taking the time to wonder over them. Some of them were idle things. An old newspaper with a coffee cup stain on the front.  A TV Guide for three weeks ago. An old vase that was now nothing but pottery shards and had held bits of dried curly willow. She salvaged what she could, stacking it on one of the nightstands. But the thing that caught her attention was a book, the pages askew and bent. She picked it up and looked at the cover. ‘Anna Karenina’ by Leo Tolstoy. She smiled to herself faintly.

Damon had always been a closet romantic. For all his faults, and he had them in droves, Damon was very sensitive and tender underneath all his masks. He was impulsive, quick-tempered, manipulative, vengeful and prone to holding a grudge to the extent of obsession.  He could be utterly callous when he was hurt or angry and mean to be, simply because he was trying to hurt you back. He was vain and arrogant and he could be monumentally selfish at times.

But he was also loyal to a fault, capable of deep passion and love and completely devoted to those he gave that love to. Something he tried very hard to hide because he had been hurt and betrayed so often in the past. His selfish streak tended to become selflessness if he cared and when he did Damon cared on a level that could not be bent or broken. He’d go to the ends of the Earth for someone he loved. He had. The thing Damon wanted most in the world was love.

It had been the vulnerable man underneath all the armor that Claire had fallen in love with against all odds. She’s never meant to fall for him. He’d been meant as an idle fling, someone to share a good time with. Instead she’d found him a kindred spirit as deeply wounded under his devil-may-care façade as she was. He’d snuck up on her.

Vincent had been her beloved anchor, her touchstone. Damon had been her light. Vincent kept her grounded, taught her to embrace what she was and enjoy it. Damon had taught her she wasn’t the monster she thought she was. Vincent had loved her as a father loves a daughter, completely and without reservation but with the caveat of molding her into what she ‘should’ be.  Damon had loved her despite it all.

He’d never cared that she had a raging temper or that she seemed frivolous and free spirited. Vincent had allowed her, her independence and freedom as a tolerant father would, giving her the room she needed to be herself and grow, but he had never quite…embraced it. He lived it alongside her. Damon had embraced it and loved it without ever questioning it.  He had lived it _with_ her. Damon had loved her as she was, never once seeking to change her and because of it she’d have followed him anywhere. She had loved with him a fire that consumed her, she still did.

Claire had never ‘gotten over’ Damon. She’d  thought she’d moved on, let him go. She’d built a life and lived it. She hadn’t let him leaving stop her from having a life that she loved. She’d done what she had to do. She’d had other lovers and she’d cared about them, even loved them. But she’d never actually let go of Damon. None of the others had ever accepted her as she was as Damon had.  None of the others had gotten to her the way Damon had. None of them accepted her as she was, not even when she’d been human. Damon was the one who got away.

Now here she was, dumped on his doorstep by no choice of her own, and rekindling all the things she’d left dormant, thought forgotten. That on top of the turmoil of losing Vincent and Alexander still being alive made her feel very unstable, divided.

She wasn’t sure she could handle losing Damon all over again on the heels of Vincent’s death. She wasn’t sure she could watch him walk away again and yet perhaps...Katherine wasn’t in the picture anymore….maybe…

Claire moved to the bathroom and scooped up the ruined clothes she had been wearing when she arrived along with the cast offs Damon had dropped this morning. She put his in the laundry hamper and then took hers to the fireplace in the living room. She searched the shredded fabric, checking the pockets in case anything remained in them worth saving.

Her fingers touched something cold and rough, her card wallet. Faux pink snakeskin on a steel frame she always had it on her despite carrying a purse whenever she left the house. The purse carried her incidentals, hairbrush, lipstick, nail polish, extra pair of panty hose. The wallet contained her. Driver’s license, credit cards and cash in case something caught her eye while she was out, receipts from purchases, business cards and a single photograph.

She couldn’t imagine why Alexander hadn’t taken it but for whatever reason he hadn’t. It had been in her back pocket when she’d been vervained. Now she found herself pulling out the picture and looking at it. Claire’s brow furrowed in the firelight as she gazed down at it, tossing the ruined clothes into the fire absently with the other hand.

The photograph was an aged and weathered black and white, the kind taken by the old folding cameras, worn from much handling. A copy of the original that resided on the mantel of her and Vincent’s Los Angeles mansion. In it were Claire, Damon and Vincent in 1927, standing on the street outside the Auditorium Theater under the lights of the billboard, in their evening attire. Michael had taken it, wanting to commemorate the evening and to play with his new toy. An autographic Kodak Vincent had bought him. 

Claire was in the middle, her back against Damon’s chest while one of his arms rested around her waist, a hand threaded through hers by her side. Vincent was on the opposite side with his head held high and haughty, his hand on his hip holding back his tailed jacket as if he thought he were President Roosevelt himself. They looked like movie stars posing on the red carpet…or a prom photo.  The carefree trio.

“I’m going to kill him Vincent.”  

 

***

Damon drove home in thought. Which considering, he wasn’t sure was such a good thing. He had more problems than he could throw a stick at and not an answer to one of them. He was angry with his brother for poking and prodding until he dug out the truth but more than that he was angry that Stefan’s seeing the truth made it impossible for _him_ to deny it.

It was so much easier to lie to yourself when you didn’t have other people telling you what you already knew but didn’t want to admit.

Now, Damon had exhausted his only real option of finding Alexander without more random people dying or risking being exposed as a vampire. They had long since lost Jonathan Gilbert’s compass that pointed to vampires and even then he had to have a human to use it since being one, he’d screw with it.  Until Alexander decided to show himself,  Damon couldn’t find him. He had to come up with a new plan, fast.

Because once night fell, Claire was going to be on a roaring rampage of revenge and she wouldn’t care how many people she killed to find him. She’d rip apart the whole town if she had to and get herself killed by the Council or, if she did manage to find him, by Alexander. She wouldn’t think, she’d just want to kill him and he’d kill her instead.  So he had to figure what to do with Claire for the night as well. He could vervain her again, break her neck and throw her in the cell in the basement without blood until he found Alexander.

But, he didn’t think it was an option. Alexander wanted to hurt them first. If he had no one to hurt….he wouldn’t reveal himself, he’d just keep trying to draw them out. If he didn’t reveal himself Damon couldn’t kill him. If Damon didn’t kill him, Alexander was going to kill Claire. And if Claire died….  Alexander had to die. Period.

However until he could find the crazed bastard he had to keep Claire from going after him. If he just caged her…she’d hate him. Forever. And he knew it and he couldn’t bear the thought. Pissing her off was one thing and it worked to keep her in check during daylight. But at night? Night was going to take a different approach entirely and he feared where it would go.

Stefan had been right and Damon knew it. He had been in love with Claire.  But he couldn’t let himself admit that maybe he still was. Why did it have to be Claire?  Now?  Before it had been Damon’s devotion and love for Katherine that had driven him away, reluctantly.  Now that he knew that Katherine had never loved him, he wasn’t saddled with that guilt.  But he loved Elena now as well. And yet… he could never have her. She was his brother’s girl… but Claire. Claire had loved him, maybe she still did. Maybe he could get back what he’d squandered then. Claire he could still have. But he didn’t still love her. Did he?

Damon gave up on the round and round thought process and tried to focus on here and now. He had a vampire to kill and another one to keep distracted so the first one didn’t kill her and he needed a plan for both. Alexander he couldn’t focus on as long as he was trying to keep Claire distracted. Claire he knew how to distract… if he didn’t hang himself in the process.

Damon parked the car and went inside, the door creaking as he listened. It was only one o’clock, Claire couldn’t have left the house but it was silent as a grave inside.  He quelled the little flutter of panic that bloomed in his stomach. Elena owned the house now, Alexander couldn’t get in unless she invited him  and Claire couldn’t go out in daylight so she had to be in here somewhere. And she had to have heard him, he wasn’t trying to be stealthy. Damon moved through the house in search of her.

He saw the burned remains of the table and her clothes in the living room fireplace. She’d actually done as he’d asked. He fought a tiny snicker at it. Claire…doing what she was told. Hell must have frozen over.  He went on, passing through the empty kitchen and the study with still no sign of her. He heard a distant rustle like fabric against leather. Clothing against couch. Claire was in the sitting room.  He moved quietly, deliberately moving with a vampire’s silence.

He found her, exactly where he had thought she was. He stood there in the doorway from the hall and watched her a moment. She sat half turned away from him, slumped down on the black leather couch, her elbow propped on the arm with a tumbler of alcohol in hand leaned against her temple as she stared morosely at the television screen. Which was silently filtering through a sequence of sunrises and sunsets. She had something on her knee below his eye line that she kept rubbing her thumb over absently. She looked wrecked.

Damon winced. She had to know he was there and yet she hadn’t made a move to indicate she even knew he existed at all. He hated this. Hated seeing her sitting there in pain and grief, some of which he had caused and some of that on purpose. _No, he didn’t_ , he corrected himself. _He wasn’t the good guy. It had to be done._ He swallowed and stepped into the room, his boots thudding softly on the hardwood floor.

“Did you find him?” Claire asked deigning to acknowledge his existence. Her voice was tight and bitter.

“Nope,” Damon admitted as he came to stand behind her at the corner of the couch.

Claire sniffed audibly with an irritated air, nodding jerkily.

Damon looked at the television her eyes hadn’t left. “Torturing yourself with celluloid sunrises?”

“Not all of us have nifty little daylight rings,” she said cuttingly. Damon flinched. That hurt but then he’d hurt her by flaunting the fact he could walk in sunlight when she couldn’t. He’d hurt her and she was throwing it back at him. He briefly had to fight the urge again to apologize to her. Damon trampled it down. He was doing this because it had to be done. If he had to piss her off, hurt her or seduce her to keep her alive, he would.

He glanced at the table next to his hip that, like the living room, served as the liquor cabinet.  There was an empty blood bag on it and two empty bottles of cuvee.  He picked one up and looked at it. “And you found the cuvee,” he remarked nonchalantly.

“You said to make myself at home,” Claire retorted with smug gratification.  Damon arched a brow at her that she didn’t see. Claire was getting vindictive in her old age. That was different. Not that Damon hadn’t set himself up for that one or had it coming.

“Why aren’t you drunk?” Damon asked. Two bottles of two thousand dollar a piece cuvee cognac should have had her on the floor.

She looked up at him then with utter annoyance on her face. Damon looked down and caught sight of what had been on her knee he hadn’t been able to see before. He leaned on his elbows on the back of the couch and smiled faintly at the photograph.

“I remember that,” he said. “That was opening night for _‘Dido and Aeneas’_.”

Claire said nothing in response she just looked back up at him as he straightened up. It was melancholy and angry.

“You’re still mad,” Damon observed. Claire glared at him.

Damon sighed, his shoulders slumping a bit. “You were being hard headed,” he protested incredulously as he poured himself a drink. He wouldn’t apologize as much as he wanted to. He couldn’t. If he did he’d fall into his own trap.

Claire craned her head to look behind her at him. She looked him square in the eye and her anger transmuted into deep hurt. Damn it he wished she wouldn’t look at him like that. He fought the desire to just come clean then and there again. He had to keep up the charade. It was for her own good. He was not tying his own noose. He knew what he was doing. Time to get things off dangerous ground.

“You know what you need?” he declared off handedly. Claire turned around and ignored him resolutely and Damon pretended not to notice it. He sat down his glass, strode confidently across the room and flipped on the IPod speaker dock, set it to ‘shuffle’ and hit ‘play all’ and set it to ‘pause’.  Belatedly he realized it was Stefan’s IPod not his, but surely his brother’s taste in music had gotten better over the years.

 He sauntered around the couch, picked up the remote and clicked off the television, then traded it for a second remote. He aimed it at the speaker dock and pressed play again. Paula Abdul’s ‘Cold Hearted’ came blasting out of the speakers. Okay. Not the best choice considering…but it had a beat.  He held out his hand to Claire. “Come on,” he said.

Claire looked at his hand then him and scooted just a bit in the opposite direction. “I don’t feel like it,” she said sullenly.  Damon cocked an eyebrow and gave her a lopsided grin.

“You love dancing,” he insisted, reaching forward and taking her hand, pulling her in flash to him. Claire stumbled and he chuckled lightly as he kept her from tilting over, holding her against his chest securely. “You _are_ a little drunk,” he remarked teasingly.  She could have resisted him but she hadn’t. She could have evaded him easily even inebriated. That told Damon everything he needed to know. His charms were working. She didn’t _really_ want to resist him.

He told himself again he was doing this because it was the best way to keep Claire distracted. He was not under any circumstances trying to see if she still loved him, or he loved her. If the fire was still there. It was all a game. A particularly dangerous game but a game. He resolutely ignored the fact that he’d nearly fallen victim to his own scheme in the shower.

Damon,” Claire protested her back stiff as a board as the strains of music pulsated through the air but she didn’t make an attempt to get out of his grasp. She stayed there with his hand on the small of her back lightly.

“You know you want to,” he cajoled playfully, moving a bit against her suggestively. Claire however remained ramrod straight. She put her hands on his chest and looked up at him thin lipped, eyes hard and determined. Uh oh.

“I’m going after him when the sun goes down.”

Damon sighed and canted his head at her as he stepped back, pulling her with him into a casual rhythm. She was as wooden as a doll.

“And what? You don’t know where he is. I can’t even find him and I’ve got a witch,” Damon said dismissively as he moved absently to the beat. Claire might as well have been nailed to the floor for all she moved. She gave him an angry and inept glance but it was turned on herself not him. She knew she couldn’t find Alexander any better than Damon could but that didn’t stop the fierce desire to kill him. Damon softened a little. He knew that desire intimately.

“Let’s be honest here.  While I admire your ability to ragingly kill anything in your path, you’re too straight forward. You hate, you kill. I’m the one who’s good at manipulation. This little endeavor is going to require a certain amount of finesse and we both know you don’t have it in you,” he said honestly but with a hint of humor. He told himself again this was him saying what needed to be. He was not trying to console her. He was stalling her. 

“I’m going after him,” Claire insisted with determination as Damon swayed them absently to the beat. By now the IPod had switched over to something with a slower beat. Some mid-tempo modern rock number. Damon shook his head resolutely.

“Alexander is older and stronger than you. He’s conniving and you’re not.” His brow furrowed and his voice became softer. He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers, his pale blue eyes peering down into Claire’s mahogany ones that burned with hatred for Alexander. “He’ll kill you.” It came out far more pained and husky than he intended.

“I don’t care,” Claire said firmly, then her gaze faltered and she swallowed hard once.

“I know,” Damon admitted quietly. “And that’s the problem.”

Every internal alarm in Damon’s head went off in warning. Another step and he’d fall into his own snare. He considered again the option of just breaking her neck and sticking her in the basement cell for the duration. His hands even slide up Claire’s slides a little in anticipation of doing it but he found he couldn’t. He flat couldn’t do it. He swallowed down the wave of reason that came behind that inability, his voice becoming chipper and nonchalant again.

“Just let it go. I know you. You’re mad and when you get mad people die.  And when people die I have to explain why there are bodies piling up. It’s very inconvenient. Besides, you know Vincent wouldn’t want you to be this way,” he teased, his nose wrinkling in humor.  He pivoted them around and Claire moved reluctantly with him. It was some progress at least.

“You’re trying to distract me,” she observed dryly. Damon pursed his lips and smiled devilishly.

“Yes I am,” he admitted, impishly. “Is it working?” He made eyes at her.

Despite herself Claire laughed faintly at his charm. “Don’t do the eye thing,” she pleaded, she had loosened some in his arms. Damon’s grin went lopsided.

“See? I knew the fun loving Claire I knew was still in there,” he said playfully. Then he became serious a moment as she leaned against him. Inch by inch she was relenting.  “Tomorrow. We’ll go after him, together,” he said. He held a finger up in pause. “But only if you can behave yourself,” he said with mock ferocity and tapped the end of her nose affectionately. Claire looked ready to protest again, as if she had a scathing come back on her tongue.  “I promise,” Damon said sincerely.

“I wish I could believe that,” Claire said, pained. Damon fought down the sting that caused him. She had every right not to believe him and he knew it.

“You can,” Damon insisted. “But tonight. Forget for a little while. Just for now, hm?” He slid his hand down her arm, twining her fingers with his and held their joined hands against his chest. He fought to ignore the sharp tingle it sent up his spine or the way her fingers curled around his like they always had.

Claire sighed and he felt her tension ebb, her body relaxing against him. “For now,” she assented quietly.

“That’s my girl,” he said and pulled her into step with him as a fast-paced number came on. “Now let’s see what new moves you got in the last eight decades.”

Those teasing words proved to be a challenge to Claire. They gyrated and writhed in synchronized rhythm that made Damon’s blood run hot. She had learned a whole new repertoire of dance moves. Slinking, snaking and sexy moves that had her moving against him in ways that he had no trouble admitting made him want to throw her on the floor where they stood. Lust he had no problem admitting to. But she didn’t take it further than fun, nothing two strangers wouldn’t indulge in at a club but Damon was having to fight the desire to slide his hands under her clothes and taste her skin, kiss her lips… to. .. Damon stopped the trail of want, desire and emotion in its tracks like he’d found himself centimeters away from a bear trap. He was distracting _her_. _Not_ him. He was _not_ trying to rekindle what they had. He was _not_ trying to find out if he still loved her, he was _not_ hopeful that she still loved him. He _wasn’t_.

Both of them had a thin film of sweat covering them and were breathing heavily as he pulled Claire’s lithe body back into his arms from a dip. “Those are some moves,” he admitted. Her arms had gone around his neck out of instinct. This was a close grind. The vertical expression of a horizontal desire.  His eyes caught hers and he grinned a bit, his lips quirking unconsciously. Claire’s eyes flickered over him and he almost gave in to the impulse to kiss her long and deep. Almost. God, he wanted to. He wanted to kiss her and know if it was still there and something in him was screaming at him, “ _Do it! You want to! You take what you want! Do it!_ ”

_“No!” he snarled back at it mentally. “I can’t. I can’t risk it. This is just an act. It’s not real.”_

The music floated into a slow piece and he didn’t know if he should welcome it or hate it. He didn’t dare to stop. If he did, Claire would be out the door before he could stop her. The vervain was out of her system, he could stop her… but he’d have to catch her first. He kept moving, his arms around Claire as they flowed with the quiet beat and he had to admit she felt good there. Just like she had in that shower. As the song neared its close he spun her out and pulled her back gently. The music changed and the world stopped moving, Damon’s heart dropped to his feet. Not this song. Why did Stefan have _this_ on his IPod? Not this song.

 _‘Claire De Lune’_ was playing.

Damon’s breath caught in his throat. “Do you remember this?” he asked in a voice so quiet it was barely audible. Claire was pressed against him, her head next to his ear in a very intimate fashion from him recalling her from the slow spin. Her voice made his skin prickle and shiver.

“How could I ever forget?” she whispered.

 

***

 

_Damon escorted Violet to the door, careful that she didn’t trip over her own drunken feet, into the arms of her Oboe playing beau, who dazedly took her arm at Damon’s prompting. Violet giggled drunkenly. Damon smiled at her, he doubted she would remember what she’d been doing all night –partying and being fed on--even if he hadn’t compelled her to forget. She and her partner were the last two guests to be shown out of 1911 Springfield Street at five to midnight._

_Vincent and Claire had decided to throw a dinner party for a change of pace and to celebrate the newly hired stage director to replace Philippe Perrin, whom Claire had killed a few months before in a blind rage. They never had figured out exactly how Philippe knew what they were but things had been quiet since. Perhaps they had just not seen him spying one night during their wild after parties.  Claude Manx, the replacement, wouldn’t be an issue. Vincent had seen to it that he was compelled never to betray their confidence or believe them to be vampires no matter what he saw straight away, unwilling to risk a repeat offense. He’d also added the little convenience that Claude always defer to Vincent’s preference on set design._

_Damon lifted Violet’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “You were delectable,” he told her.  She giggled again like a school girl, batting her eyelashes at him. Claire seemed to find blonde haired Violet’s continual advances on Damon very amusing, like someone condones an entertaining idiot doing things they’d be furious about with anyone else. She never felt threatened by other women, not that she needed to but Damon liked that about Claire. Except for that one instance with Philippe, she was unshakeable and confident. She just went with the program no matter how it played out and enjoyed every minute of it._

_Damon opened the door and let the couple out. “You two have good night,” he told them._

_“We already had one,” the oboe player, whose name Damon had never bothered to learn, said jovially. Then with a clatter of heels on wood, they descended off the porch, heading for their car at the curb. Damon shut the door behind them and locked it. The house was in total disarray. Evidence of the rollicking time they’d all had._

_He saw someone’s forgotten brassiere  (Violet’s?) hanging on the corner of the gold framed mirror on the foyer table. Someone else had knocked one of Claire’s beloved sunrise and sunset paintings askew.  Damon went over and straightened it. This one was of a sunset over a large lake, empty sailboats floating lazily on the water’s surface and the sunset reflected on it. He had yet to be able to get her to tell him why she collected them, though he had his speculations._

_The French doors to the living room off the left side of the foyer were open, flung wide to allow free passage and the notes of the Claude Debussy’s Clair De Lune were floating tranquilly through the air.  Damon went in knowing he’d find Vincent behind the keys in his royal blue smoking jacket. Michael was lounged in a corner chair with a snifter of brandy in his hand, his bowtie, waistcoat and jacket removed as Vincent played. The man’s chestnut hair was a startling contrast against the periwinkle blue of the chair._

_Michael, who Damon had on first meeting thought was Claire’s plaything and had proved to be Vincent’s instead wasn’t much of a ‘plaything’ at all. And ‘always’ compelled wasn’t exactly right. He was compelled, but for safety only it seemed. He was under compulsion to never give away their secrets, including what they were and to never let anyone in the house without prior permission preventing unwanted vampires in the house. In all other ways, Michael operated of his own free will and was with Vincent because he wanted to be. He was reserved and laid back but he had a dry sense of humor Damon appreciated._

_He was talking idly as Vincent played. “You know,” he mused, “You might consider compelling some sense into the fellows who do all the fetching at the theater. Claire was not pleased when there was another bouquet of roses left just sitting on a chair in her dressing room. They do it at least once a week. They keep losing the cards too.”_

_Vincent arched a brow behind the white baby grand he was playing, never missing a note. It was common for Vincent to play at night if they stayed in instead of going out. He said it relaxed him, along with the cognac sitting atop the piano. “You know how Claire is about flowers. Particularly roses.”_

_Damon knew from Vincent’s story. She despised them because Alexander, the vampire who had turned her by force and forced her to complete transition had made it a habit of sending them to her performances before he’d turned her. They reminded her of him and so she tolerated the constant influx of them that came with her profession at every performance but she didn’t like them in the least._

_Michael lifted his head and gave Vincent a look over the piano. “She threw them at my head.”_

_“You’re lucky that’s all she did,” Damon said with a chuckle.  Indeed, the only time he had seen Claire angry she’d ripped the man’s throat out in blind rage. Philippe._

_“She wasn’t angry, she was annoyed,” Vincent observed._

_“You coddle her,” Michael teased._

_“I coddle you too,” Vincent chuckled._

_Michael grinned. “So you do.”_

_“Speaking of Claire,” Damon said as he adjusted his sleeve where it had rolled down a bit from his elbow. He had long since taken off his tie and jacket, his shirt unbuttoned at the neck loosely and the sleeves rolled up though he’s kept his waistcoat on. “Where is she? She’s missing out on her own dinner party.”_

_In fact, Damon didn’t recall seeing her after the after dinner coffee and cigars. That had been some time ago.  He couldn’t recall her partaking in their usual debauchery either. She’d wandered off briefly with one of the guest to feed he knew but she had been a little subdued all night._

_“That’s right,” Michael said as if he’d just realized something, sitting up straight. “You’ve never been here the night of a full moon.”_

_“What’s so important about a full moon?” Damon asked. “Does she turn into a bat?” he joked. Michael laughed._

_“Claire has a little ritual,” Vincent said, his eyes cutting significantly to the window beside him. Damon moved to look through the quarter paned window and he stopped taken with the view. Claire was standing on the back lawn beneath the big American Elm tree that took up a large portion of it. Her back was to him, caught in the glow of the moonlight. Her dress was beige and close fitting with scalloped fringe tiered from the bodice all the way to the ground, her hair was in the soft curls Damon preferred over the marcel waves that were so popular now with a hair piece of pearls and marcasite mimicking vines and leaves holding back one side. Her woven silk ribbon shawl was draped languidly around her and she was standing perfectly still, her head tilted slightly back to look up at the fat bellied moon._

_“Claire De Lune,” Damon said unconsciously, not recognizing in the moment the parallel of his term of endearment to the piece Vincent was playing. Damon couldn’t take his eyes off her. There was something eloquent and beautifully melancholy about the way she stood, her hands clasping her arms against a cold that she wouldn’t have felt even if it had been snowing. He’d never seen her like that, not since that first night at the opera._

_“Indeed,” Vincent said softly._

_Damon looked away from the window to Vincent, who looked back as if he knew exactly what Damon was thinking. It was the one trait Vincent had that made Damon a little uneasy. He always seemed to know something that he never said. Like that first night at the opera, the way he’d kept Claire’s performance a secret from Damon until the opportune moment, or the fact that he’d told Damon Claire’s history without a discernible reason, or what it was Vincent ‘saw’ in Damon. Almost a year and Damon had never gotten an answer to any of it._

_Damon looked back out the window. Claire was still exactly the same. Unnaturally still, as if she were frozen there like a cemetery angel in mourning over someone’s grave.  He wanted to go to her to make whatever it was that had her so mournful go away. He no longer questioned how she made him feel or the things he wanted to do for her. He didn’t ask himself why. He took his example from Claire. He just was. He had never thought to put a name to it and he didn’t want to. Dare he think it, for the first time in sixty-three years…he was happy._

_Damon made up his mind. He turned and strode out, snagging a steel blue oversized throw off the back of the couch. He cut back through the foyer across to the dining room, where the table had been cleared of all dishes and into the kitchen. The counters were still piled high with the remains of dinner and dessert. Despite the formality of the meal the cuisine had been very much southern and ‘down-home’. Barbeque ribs with corn on the cob and mashed potatoes slathered in gravy. Pecan pie for dessert. Damon had thought the dinner menu an odd choice given that Vincent was more prone to something exotic and highbrow until he’d learned it was Claire’s favorite dish. Contrary to what popular literature would have the public believe, fiction had it wrong. Vampires on a healthy diet of blood could most certainly eat and did._

_In fact, eating along with alcohol helped take the edge off the craving for blood, though the latter was far superior. Eating however gave them no nutrients, they might as well have been eating air for the good it would do them, but it still tasted as good as it had when they were human, though nothing tasted as good as blood for obvious reasons. And it helped conceal a vampire’s nature. Not eating when one still rubbed elbows with humans would look odd._

_Damon passed quietly out the backdoor. Not so quietly Claire couldn’t hear him but enough that he wouldn’t startle her, his shoes making a soft shh-shh noise as they brushed through the manicured grass. The backyard was as immaculate as the front. Perfectly green lawn, a high privacy fence around the perimeter and greenery planted in all the customarily assigned places._

_“Star gazing?” Damon asked when he was close enough that it wouldn’t be impolite to speak, the throw draped over his arm. Vampires despite their enhanced hearing still had the habit of speaking to each other within the same distances as humans.  Claire moved then, turning her head only enough to see him before she looked back up._

_“No, not exactly,” she said softly. Damon laid the throw beneath the tree out of the way and then genteelly pulled Claire’s shawl up over her shoulders. True she wouldn’t feel the cold even if it were but that wasn’t the point. Michael appeared at the window and discreetly closed the drapes. The notes of Claire De Lune still floated on the air as Vincent kept on playing it in a constant litany._

_Claire gathered the shawl at the front with a faint quirk of her lips as Damon slid his arms around her waist from behind.  Claire relaxed into his embraced. “That’s what it looks like to me,” Damon said lightly looking up with her. The moon was bright as a diamond tonight, the glow almost impossibly white. “You’ve missed all the fun,” he teased. Claire didn’t seem to hear him lost as she was staring up at the moon like she might be able to reach out and touch it._

_“I’m pretending it’s the sun,” Claire admitted. Damon didn’t know what to say in that moment with the piano filling the air and the still night that made him understand why it was Vincent had chosen that song to play, why it had come to Damon’s lips unbidden and without thought. She really was Claire De Lune. Light of the moon._

_“He stole it from me,” she said in the most doleful tone Damon had ever heard Claire use. He swallowed, nestling his chin on Claire’s shoulder._

_“Alexander?” he said. He felt Claire nod ever so slightly, felt her let go of the shawl to cover his clasped hands with her own. “Vincent told me.”_

_“Did he?” Claire asked rhetorically her voice quiet and subdued.  Damon squeezed her affectionately against him. He didn’t like her like this. It made some part of him hurt._

_“Is that why this ritual of yours? The paintings?”_

_“Yes,” Claire admitted. “This is the night he turned me you know, twenty two years ago. That’s why the party, the food selection. Not because of some irrelevant stage director. Vincent wanted to take my mind off it. I think he’s afraid one day I’ll switch it all off.”_

_“Would you?” Damon asked, turning her to face him. His bright blue eyes peered down into Claire’s. The idea sent a chill through him. Claire without her humanity. That humanity was what made her so vibrant, so wild and free. If she ever turned it off…_

_“No. Because I’d lose all of it then. The good with the bad,” Claire said. Damon’s brow furrowed as she said it.  He pushed a lock of curls behind her ear and shook his head slightly._

_“He should never have done what he did to you,” he said. He couldn’t regret that she was a vampire. If she hadn’t been, he would never have met her and Damon couldn’t bring himself to regret that for a single moment. But he understood what it was to have your choice taken from you, to be forced to do it against your will and for some reason he couldn’t fathom he didn’t just sympathize with her, he hurt for her. Alexander had taken everything from her. The sun, her parents, her choice, her home._

_Claire looked down, her hand trailing down his arm and over his hand. Her fingers lingered over his daylight ring and Damon felt a wave of incredible guilt sweep over him through no fault of his own. He could walk in the sun and she couldn’t. She musn’t ever know that. It would hurt her.  Claire kept looking at the ring and Damon started to become very self-conscious about it.  Her lips turned up in a sad smile._

_“I know about the ring, Damon.”_

_Damon blanched, his eyes going wide. “How?”_

_“I’ve suspected for a while. Some of the things you’ve done. You would have to have gone out in the daylight. I just thought they were a myth,” she explained._

_“Claire,” Damon said hesitantly, his voice barely audible, pained.  He pulled his hand away a bit. She looked up at him._

_“I know they only work for the one they were made for. Don’t worry I won’t tell anyone. Not even Vincent,” she said assuringly, her voice genuine but wistful.  Damon sighed deeply. He believed her. What he found it hard to believe was the look of acceptance on her face. Wistful but not envious, not jealous, not angry that he had what she never could. He failed to consider why that might be when the one thing she missed most in the world was the sun._

_“Come on,” he said motioning with his head. He moved to spread the large throw out on the grass and sat down on it slightly shy of the center, his arms held out for her to come into them. She looked at him perplexed for a moment and then joined him, ensconcing herself in his arms. Damon shifted so she was leaning back against his chest, her legs curled beside her, their hands twined together.  They sat that way quietly, looking up at the moon. Sometimes Claire would shut her eyes and sigh and Damon imagined she was remembering what it felt like to sit back on a summer’s day and feel the sun on her face._

_“I was going to let myself die, not complete transition. My brother, Stefan. He made me turn. Sort of like Alexander did you,” Damon finally said, opening up to Claire. He didn’t know why exactly but he wanted her to know she wasn’t alone._

_“I’m so sorry,” Claire said, turning her head back on his shoulder to look up at him with sad eyes full of understanding._

_“Don’t be,” Damon said. “It’s not your fault.”_

_“No. But, I don’t understand how your brother could do that to you. He’s your brother. He was supposed to care about you.”_

_“It’s complicated and I hate him. I want him to suffer for the rest of eternity for what he did but somehow at the same time, sometimes I want back what we had. He was my best friend.”_

_“Why would you want anything to do with him? After what he did to you?” Claire said mystified. Damon looked down at her, his own mouth drawn a bit.  He didn’t understand it himself._

_“Maybe I just need my brother.”_

_Damon swallowed hard. He’d never admitted that to anyone and he couldn’t tell why he’d just told her. But Claire just raised his held hand to her lips and kissed it softly._

_After a long moment, Damon spoke up again. “Why do you compel them the way you do? Not that there’s anything wrong with it but you go a little above and beyond.”_

_Now it was Claire who shifted against him anxiously. He looked down at her. She drew a long breath._

_“Don’t get me wrong. I embraced what I am a long time ago thanks to Vincent but… I just…,” she paused. She shook her head, snorting softly. “It’s stupid.”_

_“Tell me,” he encouraged, jostling her gently as they watched the moon follow its path across the sky._

_“I want them to like me,” she said in a small voice._

_Damon’s brow knotted. That sounded completely unlike Claire. She loved hunting. “Why do you care?”_

_“If they leave me happy then they like me because of it,” she murmured in an embarrassed tone. If it had been anyone else Damon would have laughed at her. Told her she was pathetic for caring what a human thought of her. But with her it was different. He didn’t know why, it just was._

_“You could just compel them to like you,” Damon suggested. Claire shook her head again, the silky curls of her hair brushing against Damon’s shirt._

_“It wouldn’t be real. I want it to be real,” she said. “Maybe that’s why Alexander didn’t  compel me to let him turn me…he wanted it to be real.”_

_“Is that why you don’t have a companion?” Damon asked gently. He meant of course a compelled one, like Michael, like Damon often kept._

_“Yes, if their acceptance of me isn’t real, what’s the point?”_

_“Have you ever tried to tell someone?”_

_“My parents,” Claire said.  Damon’s shoulders drooped a bit as he realized the implication._

_“And they tried to kill you when they realized you had been turned into a vampire.”_

_“My mother caught me in the act. I tried not to. I did. But I couldn’t stop myself. I was starving and the maid came in with tea and…” Claire shook her head. “My mother screamed, I dropped the maid and my father came running. When he saw he went crazy, called me a demon. I begged him to listen to me. But he wouldn’t, he ran to the house just down the road and took my mother with him. Idiot that I am I stayed; I thought I could reason with him. I was his beloved daughter after all. My father would understand._

_“He came back with men and stakes and fire. My mother was terrified of me. I threw myself at my father begging him not to do this, that I wasn’t a demon. That I was still his daughter and when I tried to hug him he staked me. I was lucky he missed my heart. The men he had brought dragged me outside to the fire they had built with me still screaming for my parents. They turned their backs. If it hadn’t been for the fact it was night and they didn’t know exactly how to kill a vampire...I got loose and I ran. I’ve never been back.”_

_Damon winced as Claire spoke.  He understood the damage that could cause a person and a vampire would feel it deeper than most. Even he had experienced it to a degree and those formative moments after you turned, had a habit of setting you on the path you would take for the rest of you existence. His father had hated vampires and when he’d discovered that his sons—whom he had shot and killed for trying to protect Katherine—were then vampires, he had tried to kill Stefan and Stefan had killed him instead, feeding on him and transitioning._

_But his father had hated Damon before he had ever been a vampire, he was always the prodigal son, Stefan was the golden boy. But Damon still felt his father’s loss and his disapproval and hatred for him. Claire’s parents had loved her until the moment they discovered she wasn’t human anymore. They hadn’t been capable of loving her as a vampire, she’d been only a monster to them. That judgment had stuck._

_“If my parents can’t accept me what other human possibly could?” Claire said confirming Damon’s thoughts._

_“Parents are judgmental aren’t they?” Damon said. Then he moved from behind her, positioning himself with one hand braced on the throw and reaching forward with the other to caress her cheek, her eyes were pained._

_“I’d have liked you,” he said. His eyes were tracing the planes of her face, the line of her throat, the fullness of her lips. She looked doubtful. Damon knew why, knew what she thought. Of course, he would say that. He was a vampire too, he understood but she didn’t really believe he’d have accepted her if he had been human. “Even before I was turned.”_

_“No. You would have been as terrified of me as everyone else,” Claire said shaking her head._

_“You’re wrong. It wouldn’t have mattered to me that you were a vampire. I’d have loved you either way,” Damon said. Claire blinked and looked at him with stark surprise. It took Damon a beat to realize what he had just said and another to realize it was the truth._

_All the signs were there. They had been for some time. The way he felt the desire to please her, make her happy. His guilt over being able to walk in daylight when she couldn’t when it had never bothered him before. The way she made him feel. How alive he felt with her. How happy he was. He realized abruptly they had been together for almost a year and he had ceased to think of his brother, of how much he hated him and wanted to cause him misery. That he had almost forgotten that Katherine was still alive, trapped in the tomb for the next eighty two years until the comet returned. That he loved Katherine. Claire had made him, him again._

_Damon’s heart rate picked up as it sank in. He was in love with her. Oh, God help him he was in love with Claire. He had obligations. He loved Katherine. He was spoken for. But Katherine was trapped in the tomb. Who knew if he would ever get her out? Katherine had never made him feel like this. Accepted as he was, loved in return, unjudged. She’d made him fight tooth and nail for every smile, every kiss. She’d never made him feel alive and free, only desperate for her to love him back.  Claire was here, now, not waiting in some distant might never be future. And she did love him. He knew it without her saying it. That’s why she wasn’t jealous of his daylight ring. Why she’d go wherever he led. Because she loved him. Someone loved him._

_Damon let out a sharp breath of air he hadn’t realized he had been holding. “I’m in love with you.”_

_Claire face changed dramatically. The pain faded from her eyes and they lit up like embers. The tight lines smoothed out and she looked as guileless as she had the first time they’d met at the ‘Red Ivy’ but this time it was unfettered, untouched by the predator underneath the pretty face. She was just a woman, with a man who had confessed his love for her._

_Damon captured her mouth with his and kissed her long and deep. All his senses flooded at once, hot and alive. She moaned against his lips and Damon couldn’t possibly resist. He made love to her in the moonlight with the piano still playing Clair De Lune. And when the pressure built in his upper jaw, when his teeth begged to lengthen and sink into her throat, he didn’t fight it. He gave into it and Claire turned her head, the flash of her throat as she breathed an invitation. As he felt his fangs pierce her skin, tasted the warm rush of her blood on his tongue he offered her his wrist and moaned with delight as he felt her teeth sink into it. Felt his blood pulled from him even as he was drinking hers, the ecstasy of feeding combined with the intimacy of blood sharing was astounding._

_It was wonderful and exhilarating. He felt freer than he ever had in his life. The intimacy of blood sharing was incredibly significant to a vampire. It was a deep display of vulnerability and trust. There was nothing more intimate._

_When they subsided, a tangle of limbs on the throw, Claire’s shawl over them with her head on Damon’s chest, she drove the final nail in his coffin, so to speak and it consumed him as surely as the burning flames of a fire. Her fingers traced delicate patterns over his chest, her head tilted up exposing her soft throat and her eyes utterly pure. “I love you, Damon.”_

_Damon thought he’d never heard sweeter words in his life. She loved him. Someone finally loved him, for him.  Damon smiled like an idiot. He wrapped his arms around her and held on for all he was worth, kissing the top of her hair gently._

_“Do you ever miss it?” Claire asked later as they lay there in the fading moonlight. Soon they’d have to go inside, before the sun rose. Before Claire had to run from the one thing she missed most._

_“Miss what?” Damon asked idly, his hand alternating between stroking languidly along her bare upper back and wrapping the curls of her hair around his fingers before he let them slid through like spun silk._

_“Being human.”_

_Damon looked down at her, having to crane his head a little as she looked up at him, her head nestled on his chest. She was listening to his heartbeat._

_“No, of course not,” he lied._

_Claire snuggled in closer to him. “Me either,” she whispered. Damon’s breathe seized in his throat. He knew it was a lie. A vicious lie. Just like his. He caught Claire under the chin with his fingertips and drew her up. He brushed his hand through her hair.  His eyes were caught in the depths of hers._

_“If there was a way… I’d do anything to give the sun back to you. One day I will give it back to you,” he promised. She smiled brightly at him, her hand coming up to wrap around his, she nuzzled into it, her eyes shutting an instant as she kissed his palm._

_“Why do I need the sun? When I have you?”_

_Damon looked back at her with disbelieving and astonished joy. She would choose him over the sun given the choice. She’d do what Katherine never had. Claire would choose **him**. Damon smiled wide and brilliantly. Then he pulled her down to him and kissed her again, his happy laughter thrumming through the air and warring with the sting of happy tears in his eyes, only to be drowned out by the strains of Clair De Lune.  Damon had never heard a more beautiful song._

_Neither of them saw the tuft of blonde hair and feverish blue eyes that peered over the corner of the privacy fence furthest from the house or the way those eyes burned and went completely maniacally cold._

***

Damon remembered that night like it was yesterday and here she was again, in his arms. If he just moved his head bit he could kiss her. If he’d had good sense he would have turned the IPod off the moment that song started playing. If he’d had better sense he’d have broken Claire’s neck and imprisoned her until this was over only Damon didn’t have better sense…he’d gone and done it. Fallen into his own trap. What was supposed to be lustful distraction had tightened the noose of what came before around his neck as snugly as a hangman’s rope. It burned with an urgency wit in him. Give Damon enough rope…

He pulled back, stilling their slow sway to the music. He almost believed Vincent was in the study, a ghost playing on the piano there. Damon looked down at Claire and she looked up, her lips parted ever so slightly. “My Claire De Lune,” he whispered. Damon swallowed convulsively, searching her face for some hint of an answer, his brow furrowed. “I have to know,” he said and gently slid his hands on either side of Claire’s neck and tilted her head back, his thumbs caressing the tender flesh under her jaw line and lowered his mouth to hers.

Everything lit up. The sweet honeysuckle taste of her lips on his, the way he stopped breathing when he kissed her. The tiny blissfully maddening noise she made when she returned it. The way she shivered but at the same time melted into him. It was still there. All of it was there. It made him dizzy. He still loved her, he always had and she still loved him. He could feel it.

When he pulled back, their lips hovered so close together, the teasing anticipation of the kiss rejoining as he looked into her eyes, a smile tugging at his lips. Claire looked back at him and swallowed once, shaking her head gently, her bangs tickling Damon’s forehead.

“Don’t do this to me, Damon,” she said plaintively.

Damon’s forehead crinkled and he blinked. He didn’t understand.  Claire’s eyes darkened with hurt and it felt like someone stabbed him in the heart with a stake. Her hand came up and settled on his wrist as if to break his light grasp but she didn’t follow through with it.

“I know what you did.”

Damon shut his eyes and winced…remembering.  


	5. Chapter 5

_In the days that followed that night under the elm tree by the light of the full moon, Damon and Claire were inseparable. He told Claire everything. All of it. He told her how he’d fallen in love with Katherine knowing she was a vampire. He told her about his desire to become a vampire in order to be with Katherine and his subsequent wish to die if she was dead too. His part in everything that had happened as well as Stefan’s. Damon left nothing out. Not the fact that the secret to the daylight rings had been lost with the death of Emily Bennett. Not even that Katherine was still trapped in a tomb until 2009 or that he was trying to free her. He didn’t think it was fair not to tell her the truth and Claire just accepted it. He’d never met anyone like her._

_“That’s eighty two years from now,” she had said. “This is enough…for now. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”_

_That only made Damon love Claire more. Then and there he made a decision. Claire would see the sun again. Somehow, some way he was going to make it happen. And he knew where to start looking for a solution._

_He went during the day, trepidation making every fiber in his body twang with distaste. Gloria’s. He hated this place. It was Stefan’s old stomping ground and Damon flat hated it.  He stood there on the sidewalk for a long moment and steeled himself. He’d already taken the first step and completely frazzled the man he’d gotten what he needed from when the man had insisted it would take weeks to get it. Damon had given him two days. Damon had gotten what he wanted in one._

_You’re doing this for Claire, Damon reminded himself. He went in, passing through the backdoor that let out into the alleyway of the speakeasy/jazz club. It was just after lunch, so the place was empty…except for its eponymous proprietor. A pretty black woman with a shock of snow-white hair done in finger waves close to her head. Since he made no show of being quiet, she heard his sturdy loafers tap on the floor as he came in._

_“Well, well if it isn’t my favorite Salvatore brother,” the woman said with a grin as she set down the armload of alcoholic contraband she was holding._

_“Hello, Gloria,” Damon said with a charming smile. Gloria eyed him knowingly for it and moved out from behind the long table she was setting up for tonight. It was covered by a white tablecloth and a champagne fountain was set up at the center._

_“So what brings you to my den of inequity? Didn’t you say you hated this place?”_

_“That isn’t because of you…,” Damon said impishly and waggling his finger at her. Best to be on her good side for what he wanted. Gloria nodded and waved her hand at him dismissively._

_“It’s because of your brother. I know.” Gloria picked up a vase of flowers and arranged them in an absent way. “So, seeing as you hate this place and your brother has been gone for a while now…what is it you want?”_

_Straight to the point then, Damon thought. “I need a favor.”_

_Gloria turned slowly and tilted her head to the side as she crossed her arms. “Do you now? And what would someone like you need from someone like me?”_

_“You’re a witch,” Damon said._

_“Mmm hmmm,” Gloria said nodding. “But you know that already so out with it.”_

_Damon sighed. This was tricky, if he stepped wrong at all…nothing for it, it was the only chance._

_“I need you to figure out what spell was used to create this,” Damon said pulling off his daylight ring and holding it out in the palm of his hand. Gloria raised a finely arched brow at him in dark curiosity. She took the ring from his outstretched hand and held it up looking at it._

_“This is a daylight ring,” she noted. Then she leveled a look at him. “Now why would you want me to find out the spell that is on **your** ring. Works perfectly fine for you.”_

_“I need you to make another one,” Damon said._

_“And what’s in it for me?” Gloria asked. So they had agreed on a deal, Damon thought. Now they were just haggling over a price._

_“What do you want?” Damon asked._

_Gloria shrugged. “I want a lot of things,” she mused. Damon’s eyes went cold for a moment. He didn’t like being teased._

_“Don’t be a tease, Gloria,” he said with a bright smile and stepped forward, rubbing her arms encouragingly. “Name your price.”_

_“That was easy,” she said in surprise. “Just like that?”_

_Damon gave her a pointed look to get on with naming a price._

_“You want this bad don’t you?” Gloria said. “There’s a little problem. Even if I did… I can’t get what I need to make another one of these.”_

_“You’d need a ring to put the spell on,” Damon said reaching into his pocket and producing what he’d harried the man before to produce. It was small and delicate. A hand crafted silver ring formed into the motif of what Damon had specified be a nightingale but instead ,because of the length of the band looked more like a firebird, wrapped around its wearer’s finger and holding a cabochon piece of lapis lazuli in its claws, curling protectively around it as if it were an egg._

_Damon had chosen the design inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen story of the nightingale. A tiny, plain bird whose voice was the most beautiful in the world and much coveted. The Emperor of China had so desired it that he had her captured and caged. She sang for him because she had no choice but one day got free and fled. The Emperor tried to replace the nightingale with a mechanical one, resplendent with jewels and gold. For a time it was a passable substitute but it grew old and stopped working and it never compared to the real thing. The Emperor in his distress became ill and lay dying. He begged for his artisans to make the little metal bird work again yet they could not. Death came for him and suddenly there on a branch outside the window was the real nightingale. She sang away Death, saving the Emperor with her song and then told the Emperor she would sing for him so long as she remained free. The moral of the tale being that the nightingale’s beauty and true power could never be realized until she was allowed the choice to sing when and how she wanted. To be free. The tale had reminded him of Claire._

_Gloria looked at the ring and nodded. “Can’t even scrounge up a good batch of vervain around here and you come marching in with just the thing you need,” she said, impressed._

_“What can I say? I’m resourceful,” Damon said with a shrug.  Gloria considered the rings for a moment as Damon waited impatiently. Gloria handed Damon’s ring back to him and shook her head._

_“I can’t. I’m sorry.”_

_Damon fought with the desire to reach forward and choke the woman on the spot. Stringing him along. Damn witches. Damon disliked being refused what he wanted. He could force her. He barely kept the desire in check. “You can’t? What do you mean you can’t?”_

_“I’m saying I can’t. You know this, Damon. Every witch’s spell is unique, even if I could figure out what she did I couldn’t do it again. I’m good but I’m no Emily Bennett. I recognize her work.” Gloria said with an apologetic tone. Damon took a deep breath to calm himself._

_“At least try. Anything you want. I’ll do it,” Damon pleaded. Gloria narrowed her eyes at him and crossed her arms again._

_“Anything?” she asked._

_“Yes,” Damon said through clenched teeth. She was getting on his nerves again._

_“What if I told you I needed lives for it? Human lives?” Gloria asked._

_“How many?” Damon countered without blinking.  Gloria’s face grew grave._

_“You’d do it wouldn’t you? Kill innocent people to get another one of those rings?”  Gloria shook her head and moved away, setting the vase she had been working on, on the table._

_“Yes. I’d do it. I’m not a teddy bear with fangs. I’m a vampire. You need a few human lives to get things going then tell me how many. You can even name them if you want. I’ll make sure they have it coming,” Damon said reaching out for her arm. She snatched it out of his grasp before his hand could close on it and glared at him hotly._

_“Yes, you are a vampire,” she said in a dark tone. “The only reason you’d want another daylight ring is for another vampire. I won’t enable another one of you to walk around in the sun so you can do whatever you want to whoever you want.”_

_She’d been toying with him. Damon’s temper snapped like a dry twig. He moved in a blink, grabbing Gloria by the throat and pinning her to the wall, lifting so her feet kicked helplessly inches off the floor. His eyes were red and his fangs bared menacingly. He was going to get that daylight ring come hell or high water._

_“Let me put it another way. You will figure out how to replicate the spell on my ring and put it on the other one or I’ll break your neck faster than you can blink. How many lives do you need to do it?”_

_Gloria grunted under the pressure on her throat, her brows pinching together in concentration. Damon’s head burst into excruciating pain, it felt like his brain was on fire. He let go of Gloria reflexively and grasped his pained head.  Gloria dropped primly back on her feet and strode around him with a haughty air._

_“You aren’t going to do anything.”_

_The pain in Damon’s head abated as quickly as it had occurred. “What the hell was that?” he spat._

_Gloria shrugged. “Just a little something to keep you under control. I know you and that temper of yours.”_

_Damon stood there panting and glaring at her. “I thought you said I was your favorite.”_

_“You are,” Gloria said matter of factly.  Damon shook his head at her, then something struck him. “The spell doesn’t require lives does it? You were testing me.”_

_“I was. And you proved my point. Once a vampire, always a vampire. Besides don’t you think if someone could make a daylight ring, someone would have figured it out by now? You think you’re the first one to ask a witch to make one since Emily Bennett died? She took that secret to her grave.”_

_Damon shook his head in angered disgust. “You really can’t do it can you?”_

_“No. I am sorry, in my own way. I understand. Whoever you want it for must mean a great deal to you. But I won’t unleash another vampire in the daylight. Not even for you. I like you Damon but you’re still a vampire.”_

_Damon straightened up and tugged his jacket back into place, his lip lifting with disdain. He shook his head at Gloria. “I thought you were different. I thought you saw past the fangs and the blood,” he snapped as he replaced his ring on his hand and tucked the other into his pocket with a sad wince._

_“I do. But vampires will be vampires,” Gloria said. Damon clenched his teeth in inept anger and turned on his heel, stalking out with his spirit crushed._

_“I am sorry, Damon,” Gloria called after him._

_“Save it,” Damon snipped back._

_Gloria watched him go with a thoughtful gaze. Her expression no longer grave and disturbed but slightly pleased. What Damon didn’t know was Gloria was more than just a witch. She had been testing him but for her own purposes that didn’t exactly coincide with being a humanitarian. She was the almost dangerous variety of witch that existed. She practiced black magic. But she was biding her time. Now she knew if Damon wanted something bad enough, he’d kill any number of human sacrifices to get it. One day when she needed it, she’d play on that to get something she wanted. Until then Damon Salvatore would have to go away disappointed._

_***_

_Damon flip flopped between the desire to break something, kill someone and go into a raging fit of anger or all three. His idealistic plan dying before it had even begun. Damon despised not getting what he wanted. He got back in his car and slammed his flat palms against the steering wheel in frustration. That had been his only ace. If Gloria couldn’t do it, Damon doubted anyone could currently and at the moment he was fresh out of witches to harass._

_As he drove toward his apartment, he couldn’t go to Claire’s in this mood, his frustrated anger gave way to frustrated thoughts of failure. His failure. Again. He hadn’t been able to save Katherine. He couldn’t get her out of the tomb for more than eighty years. He couldn’t get Claire something as simple as a daylight ring. Exactly what use was he? All he did was fail when women he loved were involved._

_Then there was that. The women he loved. Not woman. Women. Damon felt a pang of guilt creep through his gut as he turned a corner and waited for a gaggle of giggling schoolchildren to dash across the street. He loved Katherine. He did. But he also loved Claire, he couldn’t deny that. Did loving Claire mean he was betraying Katherine?_

_Katherine was unreachable to Damon for more than eighty years and while he loved her wildly, that was a long wait even for a vampire. Claire was here, now. And she didn’t carry the stigma of being the rope in his and Stefan’s tug of war over her affection. Claire loved him. Free and clear. Didn’t Damon deserve to have someone love him for once? His father never had, his mother died when he was only a child, Stefan had betrayed him in so many ways he’d stopped counting, Katherine had done nothing but toy with him and his brother never choosing one or the other. Would it be wrong if, as Claire said, for now, Damon let himself be happy? As he had been before he’d consciously admitted he loved her? If he lived by Claire’s example and just abandoned himself to it?_

_Damon wanted that. He wanted it so bad his mouth watered with a metallic taste like a man who wanted water in a desert. But did he deserve it? Katherine he had loved first. Didn’t that make her his priority, his first duty? But it was so long and Claire loved him. Damon swallowed, his throat dry and tight. He might not deserve it but he wanted it and he’d have it. Claire loved him. He loved her easily as much as he did Katherine. He’d let himself be happy and do as Claire said. They’d cross that bridge when they got to it. If Damon was going to feel guilty he was going to feel guilty for getting what he wanted, not for denying it to himself._

_That brought him right back to the daylight ring. He wanted so badly to give Claire back the sun. Just as he had wanted and done anything Katherine asked for him, he wanted to give Claire everything she wanted and the plus to that? Claire didn’t ask for it, he’d offered. Unlike Katherine who charmingly teased what she wished from everyone around her. The glaring negative? Damon couldn’t give it to her._

_Damon sighed as he drove, coasting down Lincoln Avenue. A few blocks more and he’d be ‘home’ though now Claire’s felt more like home than his apartment did. He looked out the window idly and his eyes fell on the Biograph Theater, the site where, unbeknownst to anyone, in another seven years gangster John Dillinger would be gunned downed by the FBI. Damon’s gaze was drawn automatically to the large black lettering on the marquee.  The main feature playing struck Damon. ‘Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans’. There was his answer. He’d seen the film already while Claire was at rehearsals one night. Claire preferred to practice alone and so Damon had amused himself by going to a movie._

_The closing scene was a study in modern movie technology and the first of its kind. The main antagonist drove away into the rising sun as the movie ended. Never before had a sunrise been captured on film that way and the movie itself was one of the very first to feature a spoken soundtrack rather than the normal orchestra accompanied silent films. It was a love story to boot and Claire hadn’t seen it. She rarely got the opportunity to see picture shows since three showings a day were all the theater offered and the very last started just as the sun went down, preventing her from seeing one all the way through unless accommodations were made. Claire hadn’t even seen one of the new ‘talkies’ yet much less one with a sunrise._

_It paled in comparison to the real thing. Black and white film a poor testimony to the golds and pinks of the reality. It was a paltry and feeble substitute but for now at least… he could give her the sun in some form. He had to give her something. He couldn’t go back empty handed. Even if Claire never knew how empty his hands were.  He couldn’t be that big a failure. Not for her._

_Damon pulled the car over and parked it. He got out, strode in the theater amid the throng of movie goers and scanned over their heads for the first person in uniform. An usher who was just relaxing from fielding the last crowd into the show about to start. Damon swaggered over and tapped the man on the shoulder. He was young, barely eighteen from the look of him. He turned large naïve eyes on Damon._

_“Excuse me,” he said. “I think you might be able to help me with something.” His gaze peering deeply into the usher’s, compellingly you might say._

_“Sure,” the usher said flatly.  Damon flashed him a suave grin, his eyes glinting._

_***_

_Damon got back to Claire’s at dusk with, if not a hop in his step, no more lead than he need carry. Claire never had to know what an abysmal failure he was trying to make up for and Damon intended to make an event of it. He had it all planned out already and everything set up. The picture show, then a long leisurely stroll down Lincoln Avenue to Jonquil Park where they’d have a romantic moonlight picnic under the trees. Claire was very fond of picnics. No doubt, a past time from when she’d been human and reveled in one on a sunny spring day amid the new blooming flowers, Damon realized. He flinched inwardly a little at the thought. All he could give her now was an image on celluloid. But one day, one day he’d give her back the real thing._

_Damon knocked lightly on the door. Michael answered it, the only one awake at this hour in the Addison-Dominic household. He looked like he was about to leave himself, his flat cap already on his head, his jacket over his arm.  It was almost six o’clock, Claire and Vincent, unused to and incapable of stepping foot outside until the sun went down, were still asleep._

_Damon motioned him outside and spoke in a whisper just in case Claire was on the verge of waking. Perplexed Michael looked behind him as if to see if anyone heard them, instinctively adopting Damon’s secretive demeanor._

_“Is Claire still asleep?” Damon asked._

_Michael nodded, “Yes.”_

_Damon smiled. “Good. I’ve got a surprise for her.”_

_“She’ll be awake any minute,” Michael warned._

_“Where are you going?” Damon asked out of pure curiosity._

_“Just to run a few errands.”_

_Damon nodded. “Have fun,” he said and zipped past Michael. Michael waved after his breeze in farewell and shut the door behind him._

_Damon entered Claire’s bedroom like a hunting cat, slinking toward the bed on silent feet so he wouldn’t wake her and easing down on the side of the bed. He took a moment to admire her as she slept, her dark hair mussed and her long lashes fanning against her cheeks. She was wearing a very feminine nightgown. White linen with matching embroidery and filet lace. A contrast to the sultry clothing she preferred at night , it was quite girlish on her. He leaned over her and whispered._

_“Wake up sleepy head.”_

_Claire groaned in protest of someone trying to prod her awake, groped for the covers and started to turn over. Grouchy thing. “Wakey wakey,” Damon cajoled._

_“It’s not even dark yet,” Claire mumbled. Damon solved the whole problem by cutting off her last word with a kiss and her groan turned into a soft moan._

_“When you put it that way,” Claire said with a sleepy voice when he pulled back, stretching languidly beneath the burgundy spread. She reached up to pull his head back down for another but Damon raised a finger in admonishment._

_“Nu uh,” he said. “Not right now.” She made a delightfully pouting face at him._

_“Then why did you wake me up early like that for?”_

_“Because I’ve got something special to show you. Come on, up and dressed.” Claire slid into a sitting position, pushing her disarrayed hair behind her ears._

_“Where are we going?” she asked still fighting the last vestiges of sleep haze._

_“If I told you it wouldn’t be a surprise,” Damon said._

_“Oh, so mysterious,” Claire joked. Then she smiled brightly at him and pulled her legs out from under the covers, bouncing off the bed to the floor with light feet like a young girl. Claire was nothing if not alive. Damon, unable to resist the temptation, grabbed her wrist as she passed and pulled her back to him, stealing another kiss._

_She started to melt into it and then began to pull away denying him. Damon followed and they walked backward across the floor kissing. Damon moaned and Claire broke the kiss. “I thought you wanted me to get dressed,” she teased him._

_Damon kissed her lightly again with a reluctant groan. “I know. I do.” He pulled away from her, his hand slipping across her back playful and forced himself to go back out the door. Otherwise, they’d never make it on time. “Go before I change my mind and throw you back in the bed,” he said with a grin. “I’ll be downstairs.”_

_Claire moved toward the closet to pick out something to wear as Damon left. “Wear something casual,” he said sticking his head back in the room for an instant. He moved to leave again, changed his mind and peered in one last time “And be quick.” Then he dashed down the stairs._

_By the time Claire came downstairs Damon had already ransacked the kitchen for the picnic basket, filling it full of things that would keep until after the movie. Bread, cold cuts, cheese, grapes and strawberries and a bottle of wine. Vampire or not no one liked spoiled food. He stashed the packed basket in the car and waited._

_Claire came down having obeyed Damon’s request that she dress casually to a T. She was wearing a teal hip length V-neck sweater over a plain pleated skirt and black Mary Janes, accessorized with an absurdly long string of pearls, a silk scarf and a cloche hat over her waved hair._

_Damon beamed at the scarf. “Perfect,” he declared, snaking it from around her neck, trading it for the cup of coffee he’d brought her to get her blood flowing. They’d get a real meal later. Claire laughed lightly at him wondering what he was up to. Damon motioned for her to hurry up and drink the coffee._

_“Alright, alright,” Claire said and drank._

_Vincent came into the foyer from the living from, shuffling his feet and still trying to wake up with a cup of coffee in hand. “Evening, love birds,” he said as he sipped his coffee. He looked amusingly rumpled in his flannel pajamas and bare feet, his hair sticking up all over his head. Apparently, Vincent’s old world fashion sense halted at the bedroom door in favor of comfort._

_“Evening Vincent,” Claire said._

_“Pardon us, we’re headed for an illicit rendezvous,” Damon said. He had stretched the scarf out between his hands and folded it double._

_“Don’t let me stop you,” Vincent replied shuffling toward the kitchen, presumably in search of a refill on his coffee. Damon snagged the cup from Claire’s hand much to her consternation and thrust it into Vincent’s, who took it with a chuckle and a shake of his head._

_Damon started to raise the scarf and tie it about Claire’s head as a blind fold. She leaned away a bit, a brow arching in questioning curiosity. Damon grinned, his nose wrinkling with mischief. “Don’t you trust me?”_

_Claire smiled at him tenderly and stood absolutely still for him. “I’ll always trust you, Damon.” Damon’s devilish grin broke into a brilliant open smile as he raised the scarf again and tied it securely around her head._

_“No peeking,” he insisted._

_“I won’t,” Claire promised._

_Vincent stopped mid-shuffle and turned back as Damon got behind Claire and wrapped an arm around her to guide her out. Blindfolded even a vampire couldn’t see. They didn’t have ‘see through’ vision._

_“By the way, if I’m not home when you two get back. It’s because I had to run down to the Opera House. Claude wants me to approve the latest set design,” Vincent advised._

_“So noted,” Damon said and started to push Claire forward playfully. She laughed._

_“Behave!” Vincent ordered playfully, but he was grinning at the two like they were a love sick young couple. Damon bustled a laughing Claire out the door as he threw back over his shoulder._

_“Don’t wait up!”_

_***_

_Damon drove them to the Biograph with Claire impatiently fidgeting the whole way since he wouldn’t let her remove the blind fold._

_“Are we there yet?” she asked for the fifteenth time._

_“Almost,” Damon said as he parked on the brick paved street._

_It had not yet been paved with asphalt as it one day would be, the concrete brick serving as the surface along with the cable car lines that ran down the middle of it.  The lights of the huge marquee were on making it glow like a brilliant lamp in the darkness. Damon got out of the car while Claire tapped her fingers on the door waiting but obeying the no peeking rule. Damon opened her door for her and took her hand guiding her out of the car and onto the sidewalk._

_The street was busy and people made no attempt to be quiet as they dashed to and fro to the next amusement for the evening. Many of the patrons were headed for their cars. Good little Americans who had jobs to get to in the morning. The entrance to the Biograph Theater was devoid of foot traffic however. The last public showing had ended forty minutes ago. Normally, the theater would be closed now, the employees busy closing up for the night. Unless Damon Salvatore had paid you a visit._

_“Are we downtown?” Claire asked, her head tilting as she listened to the noise around her, instinctively using her other senses since Damon had deprived her of her eyesight for the moment. “I hear people and cars,” she said. She could hear more than the simple sounds of people and vehicles Damon knew but unless she focused on one thing in particular, she wouldn’t know exactly where they were._

_“Maybe,” Damon answered looping Claire’s arm through his and leading her toward the theater. The ticket booth was free standing and the man running it, whom Damon had already compelled, simply nodded as they passed. Damon opened the door for her, the makeshift sign stuck to the inside of the glass reading ‘Closed for Private Showing’ tapping gently against it as it moved. He escorted her in and let the door swing shut behind him._

_The usher from earlier was at his elbow before Damon could think to wonder where he was. Damon held a finger to his lips for quiet and the usher in his neat uniform nodded, leading the way toward one of the viewing rooms with their rows upon rows of seats. Claire obediently followed but the set of her mouth let Damon now she was dying to ask a barrage of question. His lips quirked in a grin._

_In silence the usher showed them to the viewing room, gesturing for Damon to pick a seat. Damon nodded in thanks and the usher dashed away to let the projectionist know they were ready. “Watch your step,” Damon advised Claire as he helped her thread her way to a prime spot. Not to high up and not too close, they were right in the center of the auditorium, the best seat in the house as far as Damon was concerned. Below them, underneath the screen was a small orchestra pit meant for the orchestra to play the accompanying score for silent films but it was empty now. This movie didn’t require it.  Claire moved slowly, feeling with her feet as her legs brushed he seats around her._

_“Where are you taking me? A rat maze?” she muttered as Damon got her positioned in front of a seat. Damon chuckled. He supposed weaving through rows of seats might feel that way if you couldn’t see what you were doing._

_“Sit,” he said and Claire obeyed, her hands running over the faux velour armrests with curiosity. “We’re going to a play?” she wondered aloud. Damon took the seat next to her and as the lights went down in preparation for the movie beginning, he leaned over and untied the blindfold, letting it slip free._

_“Not quite,” he said._

_Claire blinked, the dim light  enough to make her have to wait for her vampire eyes to adjust and then she broke into a bright smile. “A picture show!” she declared happily. Damon’s grin got bigger, influenced by Claire’s._

_“You could have told me,” she insisted admonishingly.  It wasn’t the first time she’d been to one, but the effort it took was enough that the instances were rare. But this wasn’t quite the grand ‘surprise’ she’d been expecting him to want her blind folded for._

_Damon scooted over and draped his arm around her affectionately as lovers are want to do in a movie theater. “What would be the fun in that?” he teased._

_“It’s very sweet,” Claire said._

_“I’m not sweet,” Damon insisted._

_“So you say,” Claire teased him. Damon laughed and the screen flickered to life, going from unlit gray to deep black as white lettering sprang up on it. Damon saw Claire swallow convulsively, a thin line flashing for an instant between her brows as the title card came up._

_For a moment, Damon wondered if this had been a bad idea. He was trying to compensate for something Claire didn’t know he had failed in. Was it wrong or cruel to do this? Maybe he should reconsider but as the title card gave way to the credits—a trend that would be reversed in later years with the credits coming at the end—Claire leaned against him and snuggled into his side, settling down to watch the show with him, the faint hit of a bittersweet smile on her face. A title was just a title after all._

_Damon smiled and got comfortable then as the ominous notes of the soundtrack started. He was immensely pleased at the confused but delighted look on Claire’s face when she realized, the sound wasn’t coming from an orchestra, that this was one of the new ‘talkie’ movies. As the movie began the tag cards popping up to tell the story, Claire watched the movie with rapt fascination and Damon watched Claire._

_He laughed softly as she stared at the screen and took great pleasure at her amazement when not only did music accompany the film, but sound effects. He watched her smile or frown as the story played out. As The Man- a simple farmer--was seduced by The Woman From The City to believe she loved him, convincing him to spend all his money on her until his farm went broke and then convincing  him to leave The Wife._

_Damon watched her with all the pleasure she took from the movie as she sat there absorbed by the never done before four-minute tracking shot of The Man walking despondently through the marsh over leaving his wife. Then he once again reunites with The Woman From the City and she insist the only way they can be together is if The Man sells his farm and kills The Wife.  The Man became distraught over the suggestion and tried to throttle The Woman From The City but she seduces him again and he relents, agreeing to do it._

_He failed to see the parallels to his own life. To the seducing and conniving Katherine and how she had used him as a play thing to get what she wanted. Stefan. He was too wrapped up in watching Claire enjoy something that was a rare and until now unknown treat to her. The story played on and The Man finally realizes he still loved The Wife and they reunite, never again to be parted. The love story made manifest and The Woman From The City thwarted. But what took Damon’s breath away, what made his heart seize in his chest was the final scene or rather Claire’s reaction to it. The Woman From The City rides away disgruntled in her carriage toward the marsh and the picture fades...into the rising sun._

_Claire sucked in a sharp breath, her mouth unconsciously open as she leaned forward to watch. Her eyes were huge and even in the faint lighting of the theater Damon could see the way they became glassy. For a full minute Damon got to watch Claire sit there in absolute awe as she saw her first sunrise in twenty five years. It was so much less than he wanted to give her but that minute he’d have given just about anything for. The way she lit up and became frozen with rapture, the smile that bloomed over her  face was more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen, he was sure of it. Claire’s hand found his and she clutched it fervently, unwilling to glance away from the screen. She’d stopped breathing, holding her breath in the moment._

_It was over too soon. The picture faded and the music reached its crescendo.  Damon swallowed sorry for it to be over, for that to be all he could do. Damn witches. He briefly considered the option of going back and killing Gloria in a fit of upset but Claire stemmed it with a shriek of delight and grabbed him, kissing him fiercely._

_“It was beautiful, Damon!” she declared and Damon beamed at her, hiding the pain that lanced through his heart that that one tiny minute was it. That he couldn’t give her back the sun the way he had it. That such a small thing, a few seconds of a black and white film scrolling through a projector, had made her so happy._

_Claire, completely unaware of Damon’s perceived failure, was a bundle of exuberant and overjoyed energy. She pleaded for him to make the projectionist back up the film and play the scene over again. And Damon did it, compelling the projectionist to rerun the last reel, which he had to hand crank, at least ten times. Damon would have done it a hundred times if she had wanted him to, just to watch the expression on her face bloom for that one precious moment at the end of the reel._

_By the time they left the theater, Damon fetching the basket for their picnic, Claire was so happy she was literally dancing in the street as they made their way down Lincoln Avenue toward the park. She danced to and away from Damon like a child in a meadow of flowers and completely oblivious to anything but him and what he had done. Damon couldn’t remain in his solemn mood with her doing that. It was impossible and when she grabbed him pulling him into it with her, he went with it. Heedless and uncaring of the looks of admonishment they received. He was just happy. He was happy that Claire was happy. He was happy because Claire loved him. He was happy that he loved her. He was happy that something as little as a sunrise on celluloid had sent Claire sky high with joy. Damon was plain happy._

_She gamboled along, pulling him with her; Damon was hard pressed to keep up without trotting at the same pace. The street was fairly empty now. It was after ten and most of the stores and business had closed for the night in this area of town._

_“Thank you, Damon. It was beautiful. Thank you,” Claire said. Damon smiled.  Caught up in the moment, Damon slid the basket into the crook of his arm and grabbed Claire around the waist spinning her around on the sidewalk. She leaned back in his arms laughing and he laughed with her. Then set her back down and kissed her slow and deep._

_“How could you!” a voice snarled. Damon started, he’d been so distracted by the moment he hadn’t heard anyone come near. Damon and Claire broke apart._

_“I’m sorry? How could we what? Look if you’ve got a problem with it get your own girl to…,” Damon started to say to the interfering idiot that stood in front of them as he turned to face him. The young man was about Damon’s height with a shock of blonde hair that was gelled into place beneath his fedora but that wasn’t what struck Damon it was the simultaneously furious and bereaved expression on the guy’s face. Recognition dawned on Damon. This was the same moron who’d so rudely plowed into him the first night at the opera. “You’re the guy from the…” he started to say. But Claire cut him off in such a vicious tone that Damon went wide eyed and looked sideways at her._

_“Alexander.”_

_Damon did a double take. Alexander? This was Alexander? The Alexander that had turned Claire? “Alexander Favre?”_

_He didn’t get an answer outright but they confirmed it for him. Claire was stock still, her fists clenched, her shoulders riding high, muscles coiled to spring. This could get ugly very quickly._

_“Claire,” Damon said, one hand going out to stay her. It wasn’t that he wasn’t for kicking Alexander’s ass six ways from Sunday but in the middle of a public street wasn’t an ideal choice. Especially when they had no weapons and Alexander was older than both of them combined._

_“After everything I did,” Alexander said shaking his head. Damon blinked. Was the guy blind? Did he not see that Claire was a hair’s breadth from attacking him in the middle of the street? “I’ve seen you. With him. I’ve seen it **all**.” Alexander motioned wildly at Damon, he was advancing toward Claire. Damon took a step between them, dropping the basket to one side.  _

_Back off,” Damon growled warningly. Alexander ignored him._

_“You can’t love him. You are supposed to love me. I made you. You’re mine. I’ve done everything for you.”_

_Damon looked around, there was no one in sight at the moment. Nothing he could use as a distraction to make a break for it. Damon wasn’t a coward but he was a realist. Alexander was over five hundred years old, Damon wasn’t even a hundred. There was no way Damon could take him in a fair fight. They’re best option was to run at the moment. If they could do it with enough of a lead to lose Alexander. Damon had a feeling he’d give chase and he had to know where Claire lived if he’d been watching them. It wouldn’t give them much of a lead time._

_“She gave her to me. She’s mine!” Alexander spat at Damon._

_“She who?” Damon asked but Alexander’s attention was back on Claire._

_“I gave you a gift. I preserved you_ **forever** _. Your **voice** forever. Perfect for all time. And you threw it in my face. You left me. It took me years to find you. Why did you leave me? I sent you flowers. You ignored them. I compelled that stage director to kill Vincent and Damon to get them out of the way and you stopped him. WHY? Can’t you see? **I** love you,” Alexander turned a hate filled glare on Damon. “Not him. He doesn’t love you. He **can’t** love you.”_

_This guy was utterly insane. He really thought Claire was supposed to love him for what he’d done. That she belonged to him._

_“I don’t love you. I hate you,” Claire growled. Damon cast a look over his shoulder at her. He saw red fill  her eyes, the delicate veins around them darken and her fangs lengthen. Crap. Damon had an instant to blandly admit to himself that he was surprised she hadn’t already attacked Alexander._

_“No!” Alexander yelled in rage, fangs out, and sprang toward Claire._

_Damon flash stepped between them, lashing out hard with a right hook that sent Alexander skidding down the sidewalk. “I said back off,” he bit, his own eyes shifting, fangs bared in threat. Alexander sprang to his feet and turned on Damon in fury, launching himself at him and seizing Damon by the shoulders, raising his head to strike. Damon hauled back to punch him again._

_Claire struck first in a fiery rage that sent the pair flying into the adjacent alley. “I’m not afraid of you anymore.”_

_The fight was on. A fight Claire couldn’t win. Damon threw himself into the fray._

_Claire had taken Alexander by surprise, giving her a momentary advantage. She flung Alexander into one of the brick walls forming the alley hard enough the mortar cracked and puffs of dusts emanated from around him.  He hit the wall and slid down it but a fight with a vampire is anything but slow. Especially multiple vampires. Before Damon could get there, Alexander was back on his feet. He grabbed Claire by the front of her sweater. “I’m stronger than you little girl,” Alexander bit. He slammed her into the opposite wall with a grunt, clamping a hand around her throat._

_Claire grabbed his wrist and twisted, you could hear the snap of bones. “But I’m pissed.”_

_Damon was there. He took hold of Alexander and hurtled him down the alleyway like a catapult. He grabbed Claire’s arm, intending to make a break for it while Alexander was down. But Claire pulled in the opposite direction intent on trying to kill Alexander with her bare hands. Damon pulled hard and ran, using his superior strength and speed to make her go with him. She growled in anger._

_They never made it out of the alley. Alexander zoomed past them, cutting off their escape. Damon turned, dragging a protesting Claire with him. If he couldn’t go out that way he’d go out the other, an alley had two exits. But Alexander was there too._

_“I’m going to teach you a lesson Claire,” Alexander seethed. He’d lost his hat in the melee, his blonde hair was hanging in his face now his eyes blazing insanely with anger._

_“You’re not going to teach me anything,” Claire growled and tried to attack Alexander again. Damon kept her from it, seizing her around the waist._

_“Claire stop. You can’t beat him.”_

_“Listen to the thief, Claire. You choose him over me? I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill Vincent and then I’m going to take you.”_

_“The only one who’s going to get killed is you. Come after me, come after Claire and I’ll rip your heart out while it’s still beating,” Damon threatened. He had to admit that his threat came out sounding less than convincing since he was holding on for all he was worth to a flailing Claire who was blind with rage to get her fangs into Alexander but he meant it. Every word._

_Alexander turned his hot glare on Damon. “You stole her. You took her heart from me.”_

_“Can’t steal what was never yours.” Damon backed up a pace, pulling Claire with him. If he could get a few more steps between them and Alexander he could out run him._

_“Maybe I’ll kill you now,” Alexander said and pounced. Damon ran, forcing Claire with him. Alexander grabbed him and threw him to the ground breaking Damon’s hold on Claire and , straddled him with his hand around Damon’s throat. He plunged his other hand into Damon’s chest, fingers seeking his heart. Damon cried out in agony but he fought back, clamping his own hand around Alexander’s throat and squeezing with all his might._

_“Wow, you’re strong,” Damon gasped. He groaned as Alexander’s fingers started to close on his heart._

_Then Claire was there, she latched onto Alexander’s back and wrenching his head to the side, sank her fangs into his throat viciously. Alexander roared with anger and tried to pull her off._

_“Hey! What’s going on here?” a man’s voice cried out. A flashlight beam skittered across the threesome locked in battle, bobbing up and down as a police officer jogged down the alley to find out what was going on._

_Alexander released his hold on Damon’s heart and flung Claire off him onto the pavement beside Damon. He was up and gone, shoving past the cop so quickly the human couldn’t see him go past.  Damon laid there rolling half onto his side in pain. That had hurt.  Claire was scrambling to her feet._

_“Jimmy get over here!” the cop called out, moving from a trot to a run toward Claire and Damon. There was the answering thump of another pair of feet running toward their location._

_The cop stopped and stared, his eyes flicking first to Damon who was still struggling to his feet as the wounds he had sustained healed and then to Claire, looking like a monster, eyes still red, fangs exposed and blood spilling down her chin._

_“What the…oh my God,” the cop said bugged eyed. He was terrified and rightly so. He pivoted on one foot back the way he had come. “Jimmy!” the cop screamed._

_“Claire, No!” Damon protested. It wasn’t that  he cared if the cop ended up a meal but then they’d have to explain the body and that was a real pain in the ass._

_Claire was on top of the cop in the next breath, deaf to Damon’s protest. In the one after it Damon was on his feet after Claire but it was too late. Claire had her fangs buried in the police officer’s neck as he gurgled, eyes staring in fear, horror and swiftly descending death._

_Damon didn’t bother to reprimand her. He didn’t have time. ‘Jimmy’, apparently this cop’s partner, came barreling around the corner of the alley. “Bob?” he called worriedly. “Bob!” he exclaimed catching sight of the mutilated body of the other cop._

_Claire flashed toward him. Damon was faster. He beat Claire to her intended victim and shoved her backward._

_Damon grabbed ‘Jimmy’ by his shirtfront and compelled him as fast as he could. “Forget what you saw. You found your friend this way. It was an animal attack.”_

_He barely got the words out of his mouth before Claire made another lunge for the man, rage blind. Damon grabbed her and sped from the alley._

_***_

_Damon gritted his teeth and wrestled with a flailing Claire._

_“Get in the car,” he ordered. Claire snarled and tried to wrench free. He didn’t know what she thought she was going to do. Alexander was long gone…for the moment._

_“Let go of me!” Claire growled._

_“No,” Damon snapped back. He was mad at her. He was actually furious at Claire. Irrational, rage blind, stupid, damn near suicidal… he didn’t have enough words for what he felt. He understood. Alexander was the one thing in the world Claire hated down to her marrow but to just attack him when she knew she couldn’t win? If that cop hadn’t come along…..Claire could have been taken as Alexander had in mind or worse killed. If Damon wasn’t so angry he’d have shuddered at the thought._

_“Let. Go. Of. Me,” Claire said stilling in his iron grasp but she was still seething, still itching to get her fangs or a stake or any number of other nicely painful sharp things into Alexander.  If her eyes could have spit fire they would have. Damon’s mouth twitched, he forced himself not to snarl back in fury._

_He didn’t have time for this. They didn’t have time for this. Claire was dripping blood, he had a blood stain on the front of his clothes the size of a dinner plate. If anyone saw them, they would have trouble._

_“No,” he said over emphasizing the word. He reached past her to open the car door, one hand still firmly on her arm. No sooner did he get the door open than Claire jerked free of his grasp. Damon whirled and snatched her back._

_“Get your ass in the car before I pick you up and put you in it myself,” Damon commanded._

_“No,” Claire bit defiantly. That was it, Damon jerked her off her feet before she had time to react, shoved  her into the passenger side of the car, slammed the door and flashed around the car to the driver’s side. Claire gave an indignant and angry shrill. Being older had its perks._

_Damon started the car and turned out, driving at a normal pace so they wouldn’t draw attention._

_“What did you do that for!” Claire yelled at him._

_“Because you wouldn’t listen!” Damon yelled back._

_“Who do you think you are?”_

_“The only person present with any sense!” Damon railed. He didn’t give her a chance to respond to that.  But Claire’s eyes blazed again and her jaw set. Damon didn’t care. “What were you thinking?”_

_“That I was going to rip Alexander’s head off!” Claire spat back._

_He’d never fought with Claire before. They’d never been at odds over something. This wasn’t how he’d envisioned it. He hadn’t envisioned ever fighting with Claire. She was always so malleable to whatever he cared to do._

_“With what? Your bare hands? He’s older than you, stronger, faster. He threw you around like a rag doll. You didn’t stand a chance.”_

_Damon was paying more attention to Claire than he was the road._

_“You don’t know that!” Claire snarled._

_“Yes, I do!” Damon snapped becoming angrier by the second. “You need to calm down.”_

_“Why are you mad at me? Because I tried to kill him? He attacked first!”_

_Furious Damon slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a standstill on the side of the road. He looked right at Claire, his eyes blazing almost neon blue he was so upset._

_“No. I’m mad at you because I love you!” he yelled._

_With that, Claire’s mouth, which had been open in a half snarl, ready to rebuke him again, clicked shut and she blinked in surprise. Her face softened and she looked a little chagrined. Damon’s expression relaxed._

_“I’m not a helpless, spineless damsel,” Claire said softly but a little resentful._

_“Shut up and listen to me,” Damon bit, his voice less affected with anger. Claire quieted._

_“I know you aren’t. But you didn’t think. You just reacted. Your temper is going to be the death of you one day. He could have taken you. Worse, he could have killed you. And then what?”_

_Damon looked at her and he knew he was giving himself away completely. He knew the expression on his face was pained fear. Claire swallowed and the rest of Claire’s rage fled like a wisp of smoke on the wind._

_“Damon…,” she began apologetically._

_“Don’t apologize. Let’s just…get back to the house and try figure out what to do. Alexander is not going to stop. You heard him,” Damon said in a normal voice. Claire nodded mutely, much affected by what Damon had said. Damon was affected by what he’d said._

_Back there in that alley, he’d been angry, spoiling for a fight. He’d meant every word he said and yet, he’d been terrified. When Alexander had said he’d kill him, kill Vincent and then take Claire it hadn’t been the threat to his life that scared him, it was the threat to Claire. If he lost her… he couldn’t lose someone he loved again. He’d thought he’d lost Katherine and it had torn him into tiny pieces. He’d wanted to die rather than go on without her. Even with her alive and trapped in the tomb in Mystic Falls, it had done nothing but drive him crazy that he couldn’t free her, be with her and now there was Claire and he was back in the same position. Something was threatening to take away a woman he loved._

_Damon reached in his tattered jacket pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. “Here,” he said, holding it out to Claire. “Clean yourself up. You’re a mess.”_

_She was. Her normally immaculate hair was a tousled wreath around her head, her sweater was soaked in blood and rent from where Alexander had tried to pry her off his throat and her mouth was caked with blood. He didn’t know what had happened to her hat, lost in the alley most likely._

_Claire took the handkerchief and wiped at her mouth, staining the linen scarlet. Damon took a moment to reach out and stroke his fingertips once briefly through her hair and then he was back on the road for home. He denied that those fingers trembled even a little._

_***_

_The drive back to Claire’s was quiet and tense if rapid. Damon brooding the whole way while Claire looked conflicted. Damon’s outburst had stirred up a tumult of emotions that he had to consciously fight down. He couldn’t deal with those right now. He had to focus on the here and now, on Alexander.  For the first time, Damon didn’t know what Claire was thinking. She’d gone uncharacteristically quiet and somber._

_He didn’t know if it was the manifestation of her keeping her temper in check or if there was more to it. He thought that it might be but he wasn’t sure and that needled at Damon. He always preferred to know that he had the upper hand, that he had the information no one else did and could use it to his advantage. Even if that advantage was completely innocent._

_They arrived at Claire’s well past midnight. The house was dark as a grave, not even the porch light was on. Hurriedly they rushed inside._

_“Vincent?” Damon called in unison with Claire, plunging through the front door with no ceremony._

_They stopped in their tracks. Dark as it was human eyes couldn’t have seen, but Damon and Claire had no such disadvantages. They could see perfectly well._

_Michael lay at their feet. Arms out in a martyr’s pose, his upper body laying flat, eyes blank and staring at the ceiling in death, his lower half twisted nearly the opposite way. His spine had been viciously snapped._

_Vincent was kneeling on the foyer floor, his forehead resting on Michael’s chest as he clutched the broken man’s shoulders in grief and eerily quiet. After a long moment, he said in a mild voice._

_“He’s dead.”_

_There was no question who had done this. Or why. Michael held the deed to the house and it fell to no one in the event of his death. With him dead, Alexander could enter whenever he liked, invitation or not, and it was the first move to prove how serious Alexander was. He hadn’t even bothered to fed on him, he’d just dispatched him like so much flotsam. The question was… had Alexander killed Michael before or after the confrontation in the alley?_

_Damon sighed roughly. He hadn’t been close to Michael but he’d had a sort of fondness for the man. He was a bit bothered by his death. Beside him Claire went ridged and a harsh blast of air blew through her nostrils. Damon glanced at her, concerned she was going to snap again but though her eyes blazed with fury she did nothing._

_“It hasn’t been long. Maybe a couple of hours,” Vincent observed in a detached way. He looked up at them, sitting back on his heels. His eyes were crimson and the dark veins around them pulsed, belying the calm façade Vincent spoke with. “I just got home.”  He shook his head. “Only another vampire could have done this.”_

_The time of death told Damon what he wanted to know. Michael had been killed before Alexander had confronted them in the street. Apparently, he’d been planning something already and seeing Damon and Claire living it up together like the lovers they were had set him off._

_“Alexander,” Claire stated her voice gravelly. Vincent blinked._

_“He’s here?” Vincent voice deepened a note of quiet rage in it. “How do you know?”_

_“Because he decided to go ten rounds in a back alley on Lincoln. If a cop hadn’t come along I’d be minus a heart right about now,” Damon observed. “As it is, Claire lost it, killed the cop. I had to compel his partner to cover it up and Alexander has promised to kill you and me and take possession of Claire.”_

_“The only thing he’s going to ‘possess’ is a grave marker after I drive a stake through his heart…if he’s lucky,” Claire growled. Her eyes flicked down to Michael’s corpse and for a moment sadness flashed in them, over taking the anger. Michael had been her friend. In so far as Claire called any human ‘friend’, her innate disbelief that they could accept her as a person first and a vampire second always preventing her from allowing it to be anything but casual._

_“Not if I kill him first,” Damon remarked._

_“Take a number,” Vincent said rising to his feet. “So this is his opening statement…”_

_“I don’t think that was his only statement,” Damon said his gaze sliding toward the foyer table and mirror._

_On it were flowers and attached to them, a card. Damon walked over to it and picked them up. Roses. Three of them with their thorns still attached and sharp as needles. Two black and one yellow and withered. In times to come the significance of the yellow would be lost to newer meaning but Alexander was old, in the Victorian era, something everyone present had lived through, yellow roses meant jealousy and withered roses rejection or anger. Black was death and the thorns a threat, danger._

_Claire took the card from him, glancing at the front. On it was scrawled in a very formal script, ‘3735 Rancine Street’ and nothing more. An invitation? A demand for Claire to attend upon Alexander? A trap…most certainly. It didn’t matter, Alexander had played his hand. Now it was time they played theirs._

_“Little theatrical, don’t you think?” Damon snorted derisively. Claire swallowed as if she had a bad taste in her mouth, her fingers clenching like a vice around the small card, crumpling it._

_Vincent looked at the flowers in Damon’s hand. He looked at Damon. Claire looked at both of them._

_“I say we make a statement of our own,” Vincent said resolutely. Claire’s eyes gleamed with delighted malice at the suggestion._

_“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Damon grinned wickedly._

_***_

_Damon laid Michael’s body on the backseat of his car and then turned back to Vincent. Who was standing there with a shovel. Damon took it and tossed it in the floorboard._

_“You know this would go a lot faster if you came with,” Damon noted. “Say your goodbyes, all that.”_

_Vincent cast the corpse in the backseat a melancholy look for an instant and then shook his head. “I dare not.”_

_“I don’t think you need to be worried about Alexander coming back tonight. The roses made it pretty clear he wants us to come to him.”_

_He opened the driver side door to be on his way. Michael’s body had to be taken care of. Vincent gave him a look and Damon knew what he wanted. To talk, in private. Damon reached inside the car and kicked the ignition over. The engine sputtered to life the growling idle creating a mask over their voices so Claire wouldn’t be able to hear them._

_“It’s not Alexander I’m worried about,” Vincent said. Damon looked back at the house. Where they had left Claire sitting at the kitchen table with a knife and a length of wood, carving stakes to add to the collection Vincent already possessed with a kind of foreboding calm, the kind that came just before a bomb went off._

_Damon had been shocked to be led to the basement and seeing the stock of weapons they owned. He had never thought that Vincent or Claire were the ‘armed to the teeth’ kind. He’d been mistaken, grossly. The basement held a stock of illegal alcohol, several bookshelves of old books Damon hadn’t had time to find out what were and a wall full of stakes and swords. There was no vervain, but then growing it indoors was difficult at best and impossible at worst, especially when there was a dearth of it in Chicago. Vampires had made sure vervain was scarce here for obvious reasons. It could be used against them. Of course, that could come back to bite them in the ass when they needed it against one of their own. But a stake through the heart, having the heart removed, beheading and fire would do the trick of killing a vampire._

_“You’re worried Claire is going to do something stupid,” Damon observed._

_“I know she will,” Vincent said worriedly. “She’s controlling it now. But when she sets eyes on him again, I don’t trust her not lose it. Don’t underestimate what she is capable of. It would be a mistake.”_

_Damon’s brow furrowed and he nodded in agreement. He was concerned about the same thing. She seemed calm but there was this lurking violence. Like a rabid lion on a chain, waiting for its prey to get close enough to attack._

_“She hates Alexander with a passion I have rarely seen. Even in a vampire. That kind of hate runs deep and can be all consuming. You should know,” Vincent explained._

_Damon blinked and held his tongue for a moment between his back teeth in consideration. There was that knowing note again. That ‘I know more than you realize’ undertone. Damon was tired of being the one out of the loop. He was steadily becoming the one with the least amount of information and that put him at a disadvantage. His temper was already frayed. Damon had had enough._

_“You seem to know an awful lot about me for someone I’ve only known a year,” Damon observed smoothly. A faint lopsided bittersweet grin torqued Vincent’s lips, he snorted softly._

_“Well, seeing as the past is coming back to haunt tonight. What’s a little more?” Vincent said sardonically. “I’m something of a vampire biographer. Once I was a part of what I guess you’d call ‘vampire politics’ and knowledge is power. I collect tales, stories and write them all down. Call it a hobby born of boredom. The story of the Salvatore Brothers is quite an intricate one.”_

_Damon’s temper flared wildly. Vincent had known this whole time? He’d known who he was the moment he met him?  “You knew who I was the moment you met me. All the encouraging, basically throwing Claire at me. You set me up.”_

_“No, Damon. I knew who you were by reputation only. I didn’t know you were you when we met until you introduced yourself. As for Claire, she chased you just fine on her own and you chased back. I had nothing to do with that. I just, applied a little grease to the squeaky wheel. I thought you two might be good for each other, two souls so alike and yet so utterly opposite. I never expected her to fall in love with you…or you with her. Who am I to stand in the way of love?” Vincent’s voice had become soft and thoughtful._

_Damon opened his mouth to automatically deny what Vincent had said but Vincent cut him off. “Don’t deny it, Damon. It’s obvious. You love her. And she loves you. You’ve changed her. I don’t think you know how much.”_

_Damon frowned. He’d changed nothing about Claire. She was as she’d always been. He wouldn’t want her to change. She was perfect just as she was to him._

_“Claire has always been a free spirit. Wild, untamed, the way a tiger is wild. Beautiful, fierce and dangerous but untouchable. You changed that. You did what I couldn’t.”  Vincent’s voice was almost envious now with a hint of awe and gratitude Damon didn’t know how to take._

_Damon swallowed once with great difficulty. Vincent was wrong. He hadn’t changed Claire, Claire had changed him. She’d returned him to himself. He didn’t confirm what Vincent said but he didn’t refute it either. “You love her too.”_

_“I do.”_

_“You’d do anything for her.”_

_“So would you,” Vincent countered._

_“Alright. So how do you suggest we keep the volatile vixen on a leash?”_

_“However we have to.”_

_Damon nodded and Vincent’s eyes burned with a fervor he’d never seen in them before. Michael had been Vincent’s lover, he cared for him and he grieved his loss, but Claire? Claire he’d die for if he had to and with a harsh jolt that made his spine tingle Damon realized…so would he. It terrified him and exhilarated him all at the same time._ “No. You love Katherine too. You love her most. You wouldn’t die for Claire, not when Katherine is still trapped in the tomb,” _one part of his mind railed at him in denial. Another mildly said back,_ “Claire loves you. Did Katherine ever? Or were you just deluding yourself? You _would_ die to save Claire… and never blink.”

_“You knew about my daylight ring the whole time didn’t you?” Damon said deflecting._

_“Yes,” Vincent admitted._

_“And you weren’t hoping just a little that you could figure out how to get one from me?” Damon asked bluntly. Vincent shrugged a little._

_“Can’t blame a bloke can you?”_

_Damon snorted in mild amusement. “I guess not.” Then he grew serious again. “But you never told Claire. She figured it out you know. On her own,” Damon said._

_“Why would I tell her and taunt her with the one thing she will never have again?” Vincent said solemnly._

_Damon felt his jaw tighten at that. He had tried to find a way to give it back to her. A thorny tendril of self-deprecation and failure wrapped around his heart and pierced it. ‘Can’t even get her a daylight ring. What use are you? She deserves better than you. You can never love her the way she should be,’ it mocked. ‘This is your fault. If she didn’t love you, Alexander wouldn’t be bent on capturing her. She’d still be free.’ And Damon couldn’t think of a single thing to rebuke it. Not one._

_***_

_Burying bodies has a lot of disadvantages. It’s smelly, it’s dirty, it’s sweaty and it’s quiet. Quiet enough your brain goes off on tangents while your hands monotonously shovel dirt._

_Damon was beset with a series of vexing problems.  His thoughts led down a conflicted path. He was better at being the bad guy. When people saw good, they expected good. And Damon didn’t want to have to live up to anyone’s expectations…but Claire didn’t care if he was the bad guy or the good guy. She only cared that he was him. And he couldn’t give her back the sun, he couldn’t save her from Alexander. Someone was going to die on this mission and while they firmly wanted it to be Alexander. The truth was, the likely hood of at least one of them dying in the process was almost a certainty. Alexander was far older and strong than all of them.  Worse, this was Damon’s fault. No, he hadn’t made Claire love him. But the fact was she did and that was what had sent Alexander over the edge._

_That hurt like a knife in the heart. Someone finally loved him without reservation, without expectation, as he was. And her love for him was what had put her in danger. The one thing he most desired in the world, was going to imprison the one who gave it. He couldn’t win._

_Imprisoned. That thought led to Katherine. She was already imprisoned. Was that his fate? To watch every woman he loved end up captive in one form or another, completely out of his grasp? He knew if Alexander got his hands on Claire, he would never let her go. Katherine was beyond Damon’s reach because he couldn’t do anything for her until the comet passed again. But Claire….Damon loved her. He loved her wildly and passionately. But he loved Katherine too. As much, more, less, he didn’t know but he did love Katherine._

_The petty, selfish side of his psyche, the side that cared only for himself viciously tried to stomp down on what Damon felt coming. It told him, ‘So what? You love both of them. It’s eighty years until you can see Katherine again. You love Claire. You want her. Take her. She’s yours. She’ll always be yours and you know it.’_

_But the other side. The side that **did** love Claire, the one he always tried to deny argued, ‘You love her. You deserve to be happy. You are happy. This is what you have always wanted and it was given, not taken. Let Katherine go. She toyed with you. Played you and your brother against each other. Helped to destroy your relationship with Stefan. Claire is the one, not Katherine. She’s yours. Claire will always be yours.’ _

_And yet a third belligerent and selfless side contended. “You love Claire. But you don’t deserve her. She deserves more than you can ever give her. More than your failure. You can never give her all of your heart because part of it is locked away in that tomb with Katherine and Claire deserves all of you or nothing at all. It’s not fair to give her less than that. It’s selfish. Claire is yours and she will always be yours unless you…”_

_“No!” he mentally yelled at all of it. He wouldn’t think about it. He couldn’t. “Let me just get through this and then I’ll deal with the rest.”_

_Damon paused his work. A little more and he’d have a hole deep enough to give Michael a decent burial. If it had been anyone else, Damon would have dug deep enough to hide the body, kicked it in and shoved dirt over it. But for Vincent’s sake, no for Claire if she saw the devastation the treatment of Vincent’s lover would cause him, Damon was doing this properly. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand absently._

_They had a tenuous plan to go after Alexander. The best option they could come up with given that they wanted to stop him before he could pull something they didn’t see coming. But Damon worried, just as Vincent did, that Claire would let her hate of the vampire who had turned her by force over take her sense and do something irreparably stupid. However, the best way to prevent her from doing it was still a mystery._

_If they’d had vervain they could have weakened her for long enough to keep her out of the way while he and Vincent handled Alexander. Since they didn’t, they had few other options. Locking her in the basement wasn’t an option, the heavy wooden door might seem strong but it wouldn’t stand up to a vampire on a mission. They could chain her up but the same principle applied. Claire would just break the chains and escape, probably at the worst possible time.  He could break her neck and leave her behind, but she’d heal quickly. Too quickly for it to be a justifiable advantage. He could stake her somewhere nonlethal. That would weaken her, but would it be enough? Damon was doubtful. He knew if it had been him after Stefan in a no holds barred fight to end all fights it wouldn’t stop him. The only other two options were, to anyone else who wasn’t more bent on protecting someone at any cost, abhorrent._

_Damon could use his superior speed and strength to subdue her and then drain her of her blood by force. That would take a good long while to recover from. Unless she got loose and fed on half the neighborhood. Which was a distinct possibility and pissed off wouldn’t cover her temper when she got loose. The other, the other had promise as despicable as it was. They had planned this together….if Damon let Claire come along as planned …_

_Damon thought on that long and hard as he dug in the dark of Thatcher Woods. Finally finished digging, Damon leaned on the shovel and looked down at Michael’s sheet wrapped body. He considered it for a moment. “I’m not really into commending souls to heaven or hell or where ever it is they go when they die but for what it’s worth, you were okay, Michael. Sorry, you went out like you did. And just between you, me and the crickets…I’m a bastard. And I don’t care. You know why? Because I can’t be selfish with her, I love her too much.”_

_He knew what he had to do now. Now he had a plan, a plan Claire and Vincent would never be privy too. Damon didn’t care if it was reprehensible. He didn’t mind being the bad guy. He was better at it than he was at being good anyway. But at the end of the day he’d be the one to keep Claire alive…and free. He wouldn’t fail her. Not in this. He couldn’t._

_***_

_By the time Damon got back it was creeping toward twilight, within an hour it would be dawn and thirty minutes after that the sun would slip over the horizon to blaze down on them. Giving them safety until the next night fall._

_He made his grimy way up the drive very much looking forward to a bath when the front door slammed and a blur shot across the lawn faster than the human eye could see. Damon diverted instantly to catch it, capable of seeing it just fine. He cut Claire off halfway across the lawn making her slam to a halt in front of him. She looked completely unlike herself._

_Her jaw was set like stone, her usually carefully styled hair was pushed behind her ears in natural waves that made it frizz around her head like it had a life of its own and she was wearing women’s knickers, lace up boots that hugged her ankles and a button up blouse. On her back was a rucksack stuffed to capacity until the seams bulged. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Claire was up to._

_Damon’s eyes blazed.”Where do you think you’re going?”_

_“To do what needs to be done,” Claire said evenly and side stepped. Damon matched her, exhaling sharply through his nose, it was almost a faint growl._

_Just then the front door flew open and Vincent stumbled through it clutching his abdomen and gasping. Blood soaked his shirt. “Damon. Oh thank God,” he rasped, stumbling a few paces further out onto the porch._

_“Staked you did she?” Damon asked, never taking his eyes off Claire. Who looked like she was going to attempt to claw his eyes out any second._

_“I told you she’d do this,” Vincent panted. Damon widened his stance and glared down at Claire who glared defiantly right back._

_“Go on inside. I’ve got this,” Damon told Vincent. Vincent nodded and staggered back in the house to recuperate from Claire’s disabling stake to the stomach, pushing the door shut with a bloody hand._

_Claire tried to make a break for it and Damon outpaced her, wrenching her back in front of him roughly by the arm. “Don’t make me break your neck,” he warned fiercely. He was furious at her again. Furious because he was afraid he’d lose her. That fury was all that kept him from wincing when he made his very real threat._

_Vincent would be fine in a few minutes but if Damon hadn’t returned when he had, it would have given Claire the chance to make a break for it. What was Claire thinking?_

_Claire was strained against his grip but she didn’t try to wrench free. She looked away, her expression a mimic of his own. Damon swallowed hard, his lip twitching and looked Claire up and down slowly.  How could she be so stupid?_

_“So this is your big plan? What were you going to do? Huh?” Damon growled. “Take on Alexander on your own?”_

_“No,” Claire said. It was short, blunt and dripping with something much worse under the simple word._

_“Then what did you think you were going to do?” Damon asked sharply, Claire looked up at him, her face a stony mask of unwavering choice._

_“I’m going to give him what he wants.”_

_Damon’s eyes widened in realization and then narrowed in disbelieving anger and hurt. “What?!”_

_“We go up against him now and one or both of you die. Michael is already dead. If I hand myself over, he’ll stop,” Claire reasoned. Damon grabbed her with both hands tightly and shook her hard enough to rattle a tree._

_“Are you insane?” he bit. He wanted to throttle her. He wanted to plead with her, to beg her not to do this. He wanted to kiss her passionately and declare his everlasting love. He wanted to throw her over his shoulder, take her back in the house and lock her up until this was all over with and keep her safe…free. What he wanted didn’t matter. Damon tamped down on it like he was slamming a lid on a steel box._

_“It’s temporary. I give him what he wants now and sooner or later, he’ll let down his guard. He’ll blink and I’ll kill him,” Claire insisted resolutely._

_“In what? Fifty years? A hundred? Three hundred? More? He’s over five hundred years old. He is obsessed with you. Alexander won’t stop and he won’t blink. He has spent twenty-five years looking for you. He will never let down his guard. He will keep you vervained, feed you only enough blood to keep you from desiccating in the gilded cage he locks you in for the rest of eternity with no hope of escape,” Damon seethed._

_“It’s better than the alternative. I can’t lose you,” Claire said still bound and determined to have her way._

_He felt a swell of heartbreak and love rush through him from the center of his being outward until every nerve he had hummed with it. She’d rather risk an eternity in Alexander’s clutches, eternal slavery, than risk Damon being killed. No one had ever done that for him. No one. And Claire was so bent on it she had staked Vincent and tried to sneak off to do it alone._

_A flash of weak will went through him. Damon desperately wanted to say ‘I can’t lose you either.’ But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He felt a shaft of guilt so profound rip through him it almost drowned the anger, made him want to howl with grief. How had someone like her fallen in love with someone like him? He didn’t deserve her and she deserved so much more than he could ever be._

_Damon realized abruptly that he’d never once heard Vincent refuse Claire. Not once in the entire time he’d known either of them had Vincent ever said ‘no’ to what Claire wanted.  Well Damon had, and he’d do it again._

_“No,” Damon said sternly and stepped toward the house, hauling Claire with him._

_“It’s my decision!” Claire said reaching around to pry Damon’s hand free as she stumbled in his wake. He was surprised he hadn’t broken her arm yet he was holding on so tightly._

_“You don’t get to make decisions. You make stupid ones,” Damon snapped, casually moving to the steps. Claire jerked backward and Damon stumbled but he didn’t let go. You could have set fire to him and he wouldn’t have let go._

_“I’m serious, Damon,” Claire said in an icy tone he’d never heard her use before. Quiet rage, determination that would weather a maelstrom. Damon rounded on her. She swung at him with her free hand, catching him on the cheek. His head snapped to the side but he held on to her. He moved his head back to center slowly. Claire’s eyes were smoldering at him, fiercely refusing to give in._

_“So am I,” he said leaning down toward her until they were nose to nose, lips almost touching. Until he could feel the soft puff of her warm breath on his skin. His eyes searched hers, his face a racing tableau of cascading emotions that flickered by so fast they couldn’t be discerned. “Don’t ever do that again,” he said._

_That one little phrase meant so much and nothing like what it seemed. She’d slapped him. So what? That wasn’t what he meant. Though if it had been anyone else Damon would have ripped her spine out on the spot. What he meant was don’t ever try and sacrifice yourself to save me again. Don’t try and do something so stupid ever again. Don’t make me lose you ever again. I love you too much to lose you._

_Something of it must have come through in his gaze because Claire relented, her face softened slightly and she blinked._

_“I thought you said you trusted me?” Damon asked harshly, trying to cover his slip. Claire’s face fell, a thin line developing between her brows._

_“I do trust you, Damon. I’ll always trust you,” Claire said._

_“Then believe me, **we** will kill Alexander. He **will** die. But not this way. Never this way,” Damon said his features smoothing, almost giving in to the desire to plead with her, to pull her to him and hold her, kiss her. _

_Claire’s resolve crumbled. “I believe you,” she said in a breathy and completely genuine voice. She’d follow him into the Hell if he asked her to and he knew it._

_Damon had never felt more like a monster in his life._

_***_

_Early evening came with an abruptness that surprised even Damon. It seemed as if only moments ago he’d been on the front lawn nearly pleading with Claire to trust him, scoundrel that he was. Now the sun burned just above the horizon like a red-hot drop of molten metal, sinking slowly away and dragging darkness in its wake._

_Claire moved in an odd yet graceful weaving pattern around him, instinctively and unconsciously avoiding the dying rays of the sun as she added a few more stakes and a machete to her still cached rucksack--ever a creature of the shadows and the moonlight. His Claire De Lune._

_As if to taunt him, a shaft of waning sunlight glanced across the surface of his daylight ring, drawing his attention to it as it glinted in the dim light of the kitchen. Damon fondled it a moment, looking at the thing with contrition. In that instant he wanted to take the damn thing off and hurl it as far from him as he could, drop it into Lake Michigan or toss it into the Chicago River in a fit of guilt laced fury. Though he’d never promised to, he’d wanted desperately to give Claire back the sun and failed miserably. He’d had to settle for celluloid and even though Claire had been elated by it, it had left Damon feeling…unworthy._

_The voice in his head that kept nagging at him seized the weakness to goad him. ‘Can’t even give her a silly daylight ring and you think you can keep her alive…free? You think you deserve her? She who would submit to slavery rather than see you die?’_

_‘I love her. I’d die for her,’ the second part railed back indignantly._

_‘You know what you have to do’ the last added._

_“Damon?” Vincent called sharply. Damon blinked pulling himself back to reality. “Did you hear me?” Vincent asked._

_“Uh, no,” Damon admitted. “I blanked there for a minute.”_

_“I said that’s everything. We’re ready.”_

_Damon nodded jerkily, he twisted the daylight ring on his finger again a fine line developing between his brows. Claire was never going to forgive him. But he didn’t mind being the bad guy. He did what had to be done.  “Good.” He glanced toward the window, eyeing the height of the setting sun. “In about thirty minutes we should be able to go.”_

_Vincent nodded in understanding and tied his bag shut, the stakes inside rattled hollowly. Claire set her bag on the table. They all looked at each other for a solemn moment. The three vampires ready to take on one who was older than all of them combined. Vincent was looking at Damon. But Damon was looking at Claire. He committed every feature into memory. The large doe like eyes with their warm mahogany depths, the soft raven dark tumble of her hair, the way her mouth curved softly, the precise tan olive of her flawless skin, the way her body curved under her clothes which were the same type she’d tried to harry off in last night. Damon recorded each one with all the dedication and attention to detail of a painter._

_A knock sounded. They all exchanged glances. They had been so caught in the moment they hadn’t heard anyone outside. Damon automatically picked up a stake. Claire chose a blade that it amused Damon to realize was an old standard issue Confederate Civil War Foot Officer’s sword, the same kind he had carried, once upon a time. Vincent grabbed a stake for himself and went to check who was at the door. They were not expecting company._

_As Vincent made his cautious way to the door, Damon and Claire crept out into the hall, positioning themselves offensively. Vincent looked back to make sure they were ready, at Damon’s nod Vincent pulled the door open quickly. Damon’s muscles were bunched and ready to spring, his fingers flexing with antsy anticipation around the stake he held half raised in his right hand. They immediately uncoiled the instant he saw who was on the other side of the door. Damon lowered his arm and blinked at the visitor who was quite a sight._

_She was standing there, light blonde hair lank and unkempt, her eyeliner and mascara running to create a grotesque theater mask on her pale face, sobbing hysterically in a dress that looked like she hadn’t changed it in days._

_“Violet?” Vincent said in surprise. It was the petite little harlot of a soprano from the opera. The one they often invited on their outings simply because she was amusing. She ignored the elder vampire and dashed past him without a thought, shooting straight for Damon like a trauma victim seeking shelter. Before Damon could figure out how to react she’d reached him and was pounding on his chest with her tiny balled fists and sobbing harder than ever._

_“I tried! I tried so hard,” Violet wailed. Claire arched a brow at her and Vincent shut the door with his furrowed._

_Bewildered Damon, caught her hands and backed away, trying to figure out what was going on. “Okay, Violet…,”  Damon began in a soothing voice. She was heedless._

_“Why don’t you love me? You’re supposed to love me! Not her!” Violet kept crying, she tried to pull her hands free and grope for Damon’s head, force him to kiss her._

_Damon backed in a circle to avoid her, gently prying her hands off.  Damon was utterly confused for half a beat. Violet had always had a thing for him, he knew that. It had amused Claire to no end to watch her throw herself at Damon and never get anywhere but the woman just never would give it up, even after Damon had made it crystal clear it was never going to happen. She was, now that Damon thought about it, almost verging on obsessed.  Realization dawned._

_“She’s compelled.”_

_“What?” Vincent said. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Damon. It was that he couldn’t fathom why Alexander would bother to compel someone as harmless as Violet._

_“He said if I told him everything, you’d love me!” Violet insisted still steadily trying to get her fevered little arms around Damon’s neck. Damon was quickly becoming annoyed with her hysterics though they were no fault of her own but Claire had assumed a predatory stance, the short sword quivering with tension. Damon knew the tremor racking her had nothing to do with Violet’s advances and everything to do with the aforementioned ‘he’. Alexander had used Violet as his spy._

_“Claire,” Vincent said with gentle warning. Damon hazarded a quick glance at her, the veins had begun to darken around her eyes. “Claire,” Vincent said again uselessly. He had one hand out to stay her but though she was fighting the urge, which was actually an improvement, blood was filling her eyes in a slow tide._

_“Don’t kill the messenger, Claire,” Damon urged. Her eyes were nearly full crimson and she was developing a slow snarl. “Until after you’ve got the message.”_

_He saw Claire inhale slowly and deeply through her nose and her eyes shifted back to normal. He’d gotten through to her when Vincent couldn’t and it still didn’t strike Damon why that was so important. But Vincent cast him a knowing look that Damon didn’t see he was so busy evading Violet’s constant pawing and worried Claire was going to go for the little blonde diva’s jugular._

_Damon took hold of Violet’s head, stake still in one hand, she put her hands blissfully over his. Damon let her and made her look at him. His pupils contracted to pin points as he spoke. “Violet, I want you to listen to me. How long have you been telling Alexander about us?”_

_Violet’s face pinched in confusion. “Who is Alexander?” Damon huffed in irritation. This was going to be tricky. He wasn’t being kind or gentle out of the goodness of his heart, he just wanted information from her and threatening a compelled human would get him nowhere. It was infinitely more fun but he digressed. You couldn’t undo a previous compulsion, the best you could hope for was to find a way around it._

_“The vampire who told you to spy on us,” Damon said._

_“He never told me his name,” Violet said in a dreamy voice. Damon had her caught as tightly under his mental control as he could._

_“That’s fine. Now tell me how long has he had you watching us?” Damon continued._

_“Since the night after the showcase,” Violet answered._

_A year. Alexander had been watching them for the entire year without them knowing about it. He was good, Damon gave him that. No one had even suspected that Violet was compelled or known he was here._

_“Alright. And what did he send you to do tonight?” Damon questioned. Claire and Vincent were standing by quietly waiting for him to finish._

_“I have to prove you don’t love Claire, you love me. No matter what it takes. Claire belongs to him. You stole her. You have to love me.”_

_“Is that all?”_

_“Yes,” Violet said. Damon sighed and released her. That wasn’t very helpful. A petty attempt at trying to get what he wanted by ‘proving’ to Claire that Damon was a cad. Not that he wasn’t but he was a cad with fidelity._

_“Well, that was weak,” he mused derisively at Alexander’s expense. He shrugged, arms spread._

_“Do you love me?” Violet asked. Damon snorted._

_“No. Of course I don…”_

_He never got further. Bursting into tears again Violet snatched the stake from Damon’s unsuspecting hand and flung herself at him. “Then I have to kill you.”_

_“Okay. Maybe not so weak,” Damon thought. Alexander had included a alternate course of action in his compulsion of Violet if she was unable to make Damon accede to her pleas. Underhanded and depraved. It was something meant not as an actual danger but more as a demoralizer._

_Damon caught Violet easily, thwarting her murder attempt. Claire and Vincent were in motion lightning fast. Violet posed little threat but they could never undo the compulsion Alexander had done. She’d never stop. Damon twisted the arm holding the stake, breaking Violet’s wrist and sank his fangs into her throat without even blinking. Time to kill the messenger._

_Damon followed her to the floor as she succumbed to blood loss all the while she was pathetically crying out that Damon loved her, demanding he do so. He drained her dry and let her slip limply to the floor, wiping his mouth on a handkerchief from his pocket. Two birds with one stone. They had intended to feed on the way to the address Alexander had left. They had to be at the top of their game and that meant well fed and Damon had rid them of the irritation that would be Violet for the rest of her natural life._

_Claire and Vincent looked on with deceivingly placid expressions. Violet had not been a friend, only an amusing fellow partier who provided a vein to tap without her knowledge. But the message was very clear. ‘I can manipulate everything and anyone around you at any time. I am in control. Surrender.’_

_Damon stood up, tucking his handkerchief back in his pocket and retrieving the stake Violet had snatched. He looked down at her body, pale and dead. He looked up at Claire and Vincent, his jaw set and his eyes burning with anger. Damon despised someone trying to control him or his loved ones._

_“I don’t know about you but I’m beyond ready to kill this son of a bitch. He’s really starting to annoy me.”_

_Alexander had miscalculated. Instead of demoralizing, his efforts proved to Damon more than ever that he had to do what he planned. There was no other way. He could not fail._

_***_

_Vincent dropped his latest kill onto the pavement with a dull thud. Or to be more precise it dropped when his clenched fist was ripped from the man’s torso, his heart clenched in Vincent’s fist. To Damon’s surprise Vincent was a particularly brutal killer when he chose to be. The brown haired oboe player from the theater, whose name Damon had never learned, stared blankly at the night sky at Vincent’s feet, a hole large enough to see the pavement beneath him gaping in his chest._

_The other five humans, all compelled and all hell bent to kill Vincent and Damon however impractical it might be, were the same way. Dead and discreetly hidden in the carefully planted shrubbery around the now untenanted brick building that had been a brewery before Prohibition had put it out of business. Worse, those humans had shown another level of Alexander’s devious insanity. They were all people Damon, Claire and Vincent were acquainted with._

_Henry, the baritone. George, the tenor. John, the conductor. Vera and Doris the violinists. None of them vampire hunters and woefully ill equipped to do much more than be a nuisance to the three vampires but it was enough to give them all pause. Everyone they’d spent company with had been under Alexander’s control save themselves. And Alexander knew six untrained, sadly armed humans were no threat to three prepared well fed vampires. He was just screwing with them because he could._

_“Nice technique,” Damon observed as Vincent dragged the oboe player’s body out of the way into the bushes._

_“Thank you,” Vincent said with all the cordial grace of an English gentleman, he was wiping his hands off fastidiously on a fine linen handkerchief._

_Claire stood stock still, her head canted like a bird of prey, listening for any other interlopers. Damon and Vincent fell silent to allow her to do so unimpeded. Thus far, she had held that volatile temper of hers in check but neither Damon or Vincent was convinced she could keep it there, not when she laid eyes on Alexander again. Her rage would overcome her reason. Claire’s eyes flickered around the parking lot that served the shipping bays of the brewery in unconscious tandem with her listening for audible evidence of others lying in wait._

_“That’s all of them,” she said. There was no point in whispering now. Alexander knew they were here. There was no way he could NOT know with all the killing going on. Thankfully, 3735 South Rancine Avenue was in the stockyards district and thus was set well apart from any of the nearby buildings by a good distance. Otherwise, they’d have had police all over the property when the first scream was uttered and there had most certainly been screaming. Lots of it._

_“Good,” Vincent said, adjusting his rucksack of weaponry. “Then shall we end this?” he said with an almost jovial tone._

_Claire smiled a tight, vicious smile that Damon hadn’t seen before. A provoked predator’s smile that wanted blood and would take great joy in it. Damon didn’t blame her even a little for how she felt. If Alexander had wanted Claire to be his meek immortal beloved he’d failed drastically. Claire was about as far from meek as you got. She’d happily take him apart piece by piece and then dance on his corpse. But that didn’t change Damon’s plans._

_“By all means,” Damon said and gestured for Claire to precede him. She inclined her head in thanks and moved to follow Vincent. Damon fell in behind, the rucksack  hefted on his shoulder. Before Vincent turned to lead the way, he gave Damon a short nod. It was time. Their plan and subsequently Damon’s which was designed to override his and Vincent’s previous one needed to happen now._

_Vincent turned away and began to make his way around the edge of the building, heading for a door on the other side. Damon faltered in his step, he nearly choked. Some part of him started screaming in appalled and heart wrenching protest but Damon shoved it down with a vengeance. Not now. He couldn’t falter, he couldn’t fail, he had to do this._

_Damon’s mind fought to run away with him, to race through all the reasons why he should or shouldn’t do this. But he refused to let it. He’d made his choice. He had made the one he had to make, it was the only way. He swallowed and consolidated his resolve. He stopped, reaching out for Claire’s arm at the same time._

_He caught it gently. “Claire,” he said. It came out so softly and plaintive he wanted to kick himself. She stopped, looking back with concern. Damon swallowed again, if he did this… he refused to think about it. He didn’t matter. She mattered. He didn’t mind being the bad guy. But his heart wrenched control from his brain for a moment and his face pinched. He couldn’t do this, not like this. He could hear her voice running through his head. ‘I trust you, Damon.’ ‘I believe you, Damon.’  ‘I’ll always trust you, Damon.’_

_“I know I’m probably asking the impossible but please, I am begging you, stay out here. Better yet, go home. Let me and Vincent handle this.”_

_Claire shook her head at him while behind her Vincent was shaking his twice as hard for Damon not to delay, to do it now before Claire caught on. “No.”_

_Damon grimaced sadly. He let go of her arm and ran his fingers through the hair at her temple, stroked her cheek. In the dark of the parking lot his eyes were bright as stars with wetness._

_“When we go in there, Vincent and I may not come back out. What then? What happens to you?” Damon said his voice full of gravel. Claire stepped toward him a bit, automatically responding to his touch. The way he knew she would, the way she always did. She trusted him. She was his. She loved him. God he was a bastard._

_“You’re not going without me,” Claire said firmly. Damon winced and let his hands slide the rest of the way into her hair, trail down the back of her neck, his thumbs caressing the edge of her jaw. If he blinked he knew there’d be tears on his face so he didn’t._

_“He will never let you go,” Damon said his voice strangled. Then unable to stop himself he drew her lips to his and kissed her long and lingeringly. The last one. As they pulled apart, Damon tensed his grip and lifted, Claire’s eyes widened as she realized what he was doing, hands moving to remove his hands from under her chin. Before she could stop him, Damon twisted and Claire’s neck snapped with a loud crack drowned by Damon’s sharp sob of grief. He caught her as she slumped limply, lifting her in his arms like a sleeping princess._

_He laid her in the bushes along with the other bodies ringing the perimeter of the building with great care. She would be safe there, unseen until she came around. Snapping her neck at home hadn’t been an option, she’d have come around and followed, but on the doorstep of the battle, safely hidden, the fight should be long over before she could revive._

_He stepped away and followed after Vincent who was waiting grimly, completely unaware of what was really going on. Knowing only that their ‘plan’ to waylay Claire had gone off without a hitch._

_Silently they made their way to the door. Vincent looked back at him and waved at the door. “Would you like to do the honors or shall I?”_

_Damon backed up a little, as if he were accepting Vincent’s invitation to kick the door in._

_“I was a bit concerned you wouldn’t go through with our plan,” Vincent said as he did. He wasn’t paying attention to Damon, he’d turned back to go through the door once it was open._

_Damon moved. He grabbed Vincent from behind and wrenched his head hard to one side, again the sickening crack that signaled Vincent’s neck was in pieces. Damon pulled him off to the side._

_“Sorry, Vincent. But Claire’s going to need you when I’m gone. She can’t lose us both,” Damon said. Then with a tremendous kick, Damon sent the door into the building flying like a piece of wind blow paper. He stepped through open space into the darkness of the abandoned brewery, gas can in hand and looked up toward the floors above him._

_“Come and get me you son of a bitch!” he challenged Alexander._

_***_

_Damon’s voice echoed back to him, bouncing off the brick walls of the large, dark and empty building but there was no answer from Alexander, nor any sound to indicate he was there at all. Indeed the only sounds were those of Damon’s breathing and the faint dripping of stagnant moisture build up that came with old abandoned buildings._

_The door Damon had kicked in was just around the corner from the loading dock and let out onto the main floor of the brewery. Directly in front of him were tables and machines, old dusty racks filled with unlabeled bottles mournfully waiting to be filled. To his left was a grain and malt storage area and to his right, cut off from the rest of the building by a partitioning wall and a large set of swinging green doors with absurdly large round windows in them, lay the brew house proper._

_“I know you’re in here Sandy,” Damon called derisively, using a diminutive of ‘Alexander’ goadingly, as he made his slow way out toward the center of the area. His eyes flicked back and forth, looking around and under everything in case Alexander was hiding. For the moment he thought not at all of Claire or what he had done, was doing. For Damon, in this moment, there was only the hunt. Anything else would get you killed and Damon had no intention of dying without taking Alexander with him._

_There was no answer. It was quiet. Too quiet._

_“Come on!” Damon prodded, looking among the racks of discarded bottles. There was nothing there but cobwebs. Damon moved on, steadily working his way to the green doors._

_“You practically sent a red lettered invitation ,” Damon went on. He pulled a stake and a sword out of the bag he’d brought, his mind instinctively calculating ways of escape and methods of attack with anything in the room that came to hand. “You know I must say. That was a bit theatrical don’t you think? Black and yellow roses. Subtle,” Damon mocked. “Bit antiquated though.”_

_Still not a single sound. Alexander must be lying in wait, standing perfectly still. But where, Damon wondered._

_Damon moved until his shoulder was flush with the green doors and peered through the large, dirt-smudged window to the room beyond. The brew house lay in disrepair. Huge vats lined up in neat rows like gigantic potbellied metal soldiers waiting for orders, copper pipes snaking from them in all directions, some still connected, some broken and dangling like shattered limbs. But there wasn’t a sign of Alexander._

_Damon chuckled darkly, deliberately, as he edged up so he could push his way through the doors. “Claire really does hate you. I mean really, **really** hates you. Her fondest wish is to see you dead,” Damon said. He pushed the door open a bit and slipped through. “She’s never forgiven you for turning her.” _

_He flashed forward a few paces and glanced around, stake and sword ready. “She never will.”_

_There was the faintest rush of air._

_“Are you really this stupid?” Alexander’s voice menaced from behind Damon. Damon spun in place and gave him one of his patented smart-ass smirks._

_Allowed a moment to look at him without his face contorted into a rage, Damon noticed that Alexander looked incredibly young. He couldn’t have been more than twenty when he was turned and his baby face and longish fair hair only made his youth seem more pronounced. Damon braced himself, weapons ready._

_Alexander looked Damon up and down with the air  of a man who has found an annoying pest in his kitchen eating his expensive caviar. “It seems so,” he commented and moved. So did Damon._

_By the time Alexander had sped to where Damon was, Damon was where Alexander had been. Alexander seethed. Damon grinned. This is what he wanted. He wanted Alexander angry and irrational. He’d make more mistakes, do something risky and then Damon would have him despite the large advantage in strength and speed Alexander had. With vampires looks were deceiving._

_If Damon just went for him, Alexander would kill him in an instant and Damon knew it._

_“You know what I think?” Damon taunted. “I think, if it had been me,” Damon waved at himself with the sword point, “Claire had met in 1905. She’d have **begged** me to turn her.”_

_Damon didn’t actually know that for certain, she’d never said as much but he suddenly realized he believed it. If he had met Claire first, if it had been him instead of Alexander, he truly believed Claire would have asked him to turn her and been thrilled with what she became. No, he **knew** she would have. She’d have done for him what he had been willing to do for Katherine. Become a vampire so they could be together forever. _ ‘Who needs the sun, when I have you?’ _That sliced through him like a knife._

_Apparently, it had a similar effect on Alexander. His shoulders rose and his fists clenched. Damon could hear the man’s teeth grinding like wet stones rubbed together._

_Damon kept it going. “But you? You were so pathetic you chloroformed her in her own bed and kidnapped her. You fed her your blood, stabbed her through the heart, then held her down and made her feed on a human. You were so desperate for a woman like Claire to love you; to belong to you. You didn’t even compel her. What kind of vampire uses chloroform?”_

_Alexander snarled, his eyes shifting, his fangs sliding out._

_“Oh. That’s right,” Damon taunted, malicious glee in his eyes. “You wanted it to be ‘real’.”  Damon was going to enjoy killing Alexander. For so many reasons. Frankly, Damon was surprised Alexander hadn’t attacked him already. “How could a woman like Claire **ever** love someone like you?”_

_That did it. Alexander roared in fury and bolted for him. Damon dodged, zipping back the way he had come, further into the rows of vats. But Alexander was pissed and he was faster and stronger. He doubled back and caught him, tossing Damon into the side of one of those vats with a sloshing clang. Sloshing clang? Why did it slosh? This place had been out of commission for eight years. There was a large dent left behind where Damon impacted and tumbled to the floor._

_That had cracked ribs, Damon could feel it. “That all ya got?” Damon picked.  Alexander stalked for him. Damon was busy trying to pick himself up off the floor, his clothing covered in fine beige dust._

_“I told you I’d kill you,” Alexander growled._

_“And I promised I’d rip your heart out while it was still beating if you came after me or Claire,” Damon said pulling himself up on his knees, he still had a firm hold on his stake and sword. He wouldn’t let go of them for anything. “The only one dying today is you.”_

_“Claire is mine. I made her. She belongs to me. She loves me!”_

_“Claire belongs to no one,” Damon said. He flashed from the floor toward Alexander and caught him off guard. He rammed the sword through Alexander’s stomach. He ignored the voice in his head that even in battle couldn’t help but contradict him. “She belongs to you. Willingly.”_

_Alexander grunted, as the blade slid in to the hilt. Damon pulled him in closer twisting the sword, his head next to Alexander’s ear as the older vampire writhed on the blade, trying to get it out. Damon held him fast by his shirt, sneaking his hand over Alexander’s back to stake him from behind where he stood._

_“Claire loves **me**. And you know what else? She sings for me. Me, alone. Anytime I want.” He said it in a bare whisper, a razor sharp knife meant to hurt more than the sword blade ever could. “You should hear her sing ‘Bye, Bye, Blackbird.’” Damon sucked in a long savoring hiss to emphasize it and raised the stake._

_Alexander screamed like a dying banshee in anguished rage and flung Damon back with such force he hit the ground and slid several yards. The sword ripped from Alexander’s abdomen and he grabbed it, racing for Damon. Damon scrambled for footing in the thin layer of fine grit dust covering the floor. Now Alexander was really pissed and he had a weapon._

_Before Damon could get to his feet Alexander was on him. The sword swung down toward Damon’s neck like a flash of lightning. Damon went wide eyed and rolled to the side, narrowly missing the blade as it struck the ground with a vibrating twang. He bolted. Alexander grabbed him and flung him back down, plunging the sword through Damon’s shoulder. Damon barked in pain. Pinned like an insect to a bug collector’s board._

_Alexander dropped down, straddling him, bending the sword sideways until it was pressed to Damon’s throat and still embedded in his shoulder at the same time. It made the sword slip, tearing muscle and tendon. It would heal but it hurt like hell. Alexander forced the thin steel to obey him, shoving it into Damon’s esophagus. Damon brought the stake up, wedging it under the blade and trying to prevent Alexander from slicing his head off like he was wielding a cheese cutter._

_Maybe he had provoked Alexander a little too much, Damon thought as he started to choke on his own blood. The blade was inching its way into his neck by brute force alone. If this kept on Damon was a dead ‘dead’ man. There was no way Damon could allow that. Either Alexander died and Damon won, or they both died. Letting Alexander walk wasn’t an option. Not when it meant eternal servitude to this baby faced lunatic for Claire._

_Damon, absurd as it was to have a vision of anything other than your own impending doom in a fight like this, had a brief vision of that future. Claire, kneeling shackled and collared in bejeweled gold chains, behind ornate gold bars. A literal gilded cage in a flowered Greek garden by faint darkness. Alexander’s prize. She looked up, her eyes swollen and red from crying, shadowed from starvation. She was thin to the point of desiccation but she was still ethereally beautiful and heartbreakingly frail in her gossamer white goddess gown. ‘Damon,’ she whispered pleadingly. His name was little more than a breath of air._

_Damon tried to move to her. To rip the bars apart and free her…only to find he was bound by iron chains to the garden’s enclosing walls. They were thick and heavy, heavier than even he could break. Damon screamed in anger, throwing himself against the chains futilely. Light began to cascade over the wall._

_It took a moment for Damon to put two and two together…. an open garden…light….sunlight. The sun was rising! “Claire!” Damon called desperately. He redoubled his efforts to get free of the chains. To get to Claire before the sunlight could reach her. But he knew it was useless. The sun was rising abnormally fast, light flowing over the wall and through the garden like a flood. Claire never moved, never begged him to save her or cried out in fear. Never tried to throw herself against the bars in terror. All her vibrant spirit was gone. Damon was going to watch her die. Oh God._

_Damon braced his feet on the wall and tried to wrench the chains from the rings bolted there but nothing happened. It was as if he had no strength at all. Sunlight bathed him, flashing accusingly off his daylight ring as he fought his imprisonment. It rushed like a tide toward the golden cage and Damon knew it was too late._

_“No!” Damon cried, tears in his eyes. Not like this. She’d burn. The way Damon had thought he’d watched Katherine burn in the church, consumed by fire. Claire only looked at him sadly. Damon, pride be damned, flung himself on the ground and crawled as far as the chains would allow. Surprisingly they were quite long, just not long enough to enable him to reach the bars, to free her. He stretched out until he was lying on the grass on his belly, his hand held out to her, fingers straining._

_She moved then, pushing against the bars and reaching through them as far as she could. Damon groaned with the effort, nearly forcing his arms out of socket to do it but his fingertips met hers. He scrabbled and managed to twine their fingers together._

_His eyes met hers and he saw fear there. Unabashed, blatant fear and heart break and somehow Damon knew without a shadow of a doubt as the rays inched toward her that this was his fault. He’d failed. He didn’t know how but he had._

_“Look at me,” Damon said desperately. “Just look at me. Okay? Don’t let go.”_

_She nodded, jerkily. “I love you,” Damon told her. Then before she could answer him, sunlight hit her and she screamed. It was a soul piercing sound. The sound of a thousand angels flung into the pit of Hell to burn. Her skin smoked and hissed, flesh turning raw and broiled before his eyes but Damon didn’t look away.  It took only moments and then Damon was left holding only ash. All that was left of his lovely Claire De Lune. It ran through his fingers like sand. Damon wailed, the noise tearing itself from his throat in grief and guilt._

_Alexander laughed cruelly, jerking Damon out of his vision. Suddenly Damon realized it hadn’t been a ‘vision’, a brief imagined horror that took only seconds to see in all its clarity. Alexander had been screwing with his head. Damon was still on the brew house’s dusty floor and the sword blade was embedded even more deeply in his throat._

_“You son of a bitch,” Damon gurgled through his own blood._

_“It was pitifully easy to get inside your head,” Alexander mocked. “I’m almost seven times your age. You can’t kill me.” His eyes were feverish and wild, his hair hanging lankly in his face as he bore down on the blade with all his might.  Damon’s eyes filled with blood, the veins spidering out around them and his fangs flashed in fury, he remembered he had the stake between the blade and his throat, more or less. It was the only thing saving him from decapitation._

_“Watch me,” Damon snarled and shoved hard. Alexander toppled backward onto his rear and Damon leapt to his feet, pulling the twisted sword from his shoulder as if it were nothing more than a thorn. He tossed it away with a clatter and lunged for Alexander. But Alexander was indeed older, much as Damon despised the fact, much as what he wanted to do was sink his hand slowly into the towheaded bastard’s chest and pull his heart out while Alexander watched. Alexander danced out of reach, laughing mockingly at him._

_Now Damon was pissed. Bad enough that Alexander had chosen to screw with his head, with that motif in particular. Bad enough Damon had gone into this protecting Claire, the woman he loved, from permanent slavery to the bastard, now Damon was seized by something else he fiercely refused to acknowledge. This wasn’t just a fight to keep Claire safe and free or because Damon didn’t like it when people screwed with him, he was fighting another man for a woman. Wasn’t history funny? Didn’t it always come down to the love of a woman? He resolutely refused to acknowledge that, he’d made his choice, but it fueled him._

_“Isn’t so much fun when it’s you who has something you think you own taken from you is it?” Alexander said his eyes narrowed. He paced, keeping careful distance between himself and Damon. Alexander’s voice became low with anger. “You stole her heart from me.”_

_Damon snorted. He couldn’t help himself. “I didn’t steal anything. She gave it to me.”_

_Alexander was suddenly in front of him, having moved in a flash. “You don’t deserve her.”_

_He picked Damon up and rushed him backward like a linebacker, bashing Damon into another vat and holding him there. It gave that same hollow slosh as the other one had. Damon let him, he still had the stake. Though he let out a sharp grunt of pain as he felt bones break on impact. “Neither do you.”_

_Alexander screamed in his face, once again all rage and insanity. Damon pushed his arms up and between Alexander’s, the stake gripped firmly._

_“Well, it’s been fun, really it has,” Damon said. “But I think I’ll call it a night.” Then he thrust up and forward… straight into Alexander’s chest. Alexander went wide eyed and gasped for a moment. Damon grinned._

_Then Alexander roared. There was no other word for it. He roared like a dragon who’s had a lance poked into its sensitive nose by a knight but was otherwise fine. Damon had missed his heart! Alexander pulled the stake out and reversed it driving it into Damon’s chest. Narrowly missing Damon’s heart._

_Damon groaned and collapsed, the stake affecting the younger vampire far more than Alexander. Alexander kicked him in the head, causing Damon to flip so he was on his back. Damon could only lie there, trying to get the stake out without making it hit his heart. Dust floated in the air from their struggles invading Damon’s nose with a musty smell and making him want to sneeze. It was everywhere. All over Damon, clouding the air so every breath was full of it. Damon’s leg tapped the vat he’d just been pinned to, echoing from the small contact. Alexander loomed over him with a triumphant grin. Damon had to think fast, he was on the precipice of death. If Alexander shoved that stake even a centimeter further Damon was dead._

_His mind raced. What could he do? He’d failed. This was it. He was going to die. Claire would spend the rest of her unnaturally long life as Alexander’s love slave, Vincent was as good as dead, Alexander would kill him before he ever woke up and Katherine would never be freed from the tomb. Damon had royally screwed up. No, no he’d never deserved Claire. This was his fault._

_What a place to die. An old abandoned brewery full of old machinery that was rusted, vats that sloshed fetidly and dust that clogged his air way. Old brewery. Sloshing vats. Dust. Grain storage area. Grain dust. Like an old silo. Old fermented alcohol that had been left where it stood by disgruntled workers when Prohibition had put the brewery out of business in a day. He was sitting on a bomb. This whole building was one gigantic bomb._

_Damon tried to get the stake out with one hand and fumbled in his pocket with the other. He had a box of matches on him most of the time since he had a liking for cigars. He just hoped he’d put it there today._

_“I told you I’d kill you,” Alexander said grinning, moving forward to drive the stake the rest of the way home. Damon dug faster and his fingers touched the tiny rectangular box. Jackpot!_

_“Yes, you did. But there’s this thing,” Damon rasped. Damn this stake hurt. He got the box open and pulled out a hand full of matches, lining them up along his palm.  He pulled the stake out with the other hand finally, lying there weakened on the floor, panting for breath. Alexander seemed unalarmed by it. Not as if, weak as he thought Damon was, he couldn’t just put it back in._

_“And what’s that?” Alexander said with disdain._

_Damon looked right in his eyes. He pulled the box out of his pocket, rolled on his side and struck the entire line of matches in his hand on the rough side of the box. “If I’m going to Hell, I’m taking you with me.”_

_Alexander didn’t have time to react. Damon flung the matches and the air exploded. Or at least that’s what it looked like. The matches’ flame ignited the motes of dust the instant they touched them, and those motes ignited every one nearby. Fire was blooming in mid air and it engulfed Alexander in one huge plume._

_Alexander screamed, batting at the flames. Damon struggled up as Alexander stumbled around trying to extinguish the flames. But Damon’s ploy had been dangerous. The matches didn’t exactly have a targeting mechanism and now Alexander’s desperate flailing was causing fingers of flame to arch of him, catching more of the grain dust on fire, setting the thin layer of it on the brew house floor alight. What had been meant to cook Alexander was going to send the whole place up in flames._

_Damon staggered, weakened by the fight and blood loss his arms up to shield his face from the wall of flame that cut across the floor in a wide swath. Alexander was still screaming unable to put himself out. There was no way Alexander would survive this, he was one huge pillar of flame now. The heat was stifling. Damon had to get out before he ended up charbroiled along with him._

_Stilling himself Damon gathered his strength and bolted from the building. He nearly collapsed again when he got outside. He looked back through the open doorframe, the fire had begun to engulf the entire first floor with amazing speed, the heat so intense that it felt like it might scorch Damon where he stood. He glanced down at Vincent’s still unconscious body, his head twisted at an unnatural angle and groaned. Damon would have to move him if he didn’t want him to get cooked._

_Grabbing the Englishman’s arms Damon fought to drag him far enough away from the building and into the parking lot that he would be safe from the fire. He dropped him in a tangle, then Damon went back for Claire._

_He could still hear Alexander screaming bloody murder inside the building, hearing him thrashing around, bumping into things wildly. Damon needed to move faster. Sooner or later Alexander was going to get too close to one of those vats and ignite it. Then the place would blow up._

_Forcing his abused body to cooperate, Damon scooped Claire up, her head no longer lolling strangely. the bones in her neck knitting. He flashed from the side of the building toward Vincent’s prone form. He lay Claire down gently and straightened her limbs, turned her head gently so her cheek wasn’t on the rough pavement. His heart caught in his throat as the fire bathed them in orange light._

_He’d made his choice. He couldn’t make any other. He didn’t deserve Claire. He never had. She loved him as he’d always wanted to be, unconditionally with no reservations, just as he was._

_But he didn’t deserve it. He had failed before he’d even begun. He couldn’t get her a daylight ring, couldn’t give her back the sun. He’d nearly lost the fight with Alexander. A fight that wouldn’t have been necessary if Claire hadn’t loved him instead of that imbecile. Damon did nothing but hurt her._

_She deserved more than he could ever give her. She deserved better than him. She deserved someone who wasn’t already spoken for. He loved Claire, he did. Wildly, passionately, deeply. But he’d loved Katherine first and Claire deserved someone one that loved her and only her. Who could give her their whole heart not a portion of it. He knew he loved them both at least as much as the other and that tore at him. It wasn’t fair to either of them._

_But he wanted to stay. He wanted to stay so badly. Claire made him feel alive. He wanted to stay with her forever, to have with her all he never had with Katherine. Claire he’d never had to fight for. She’d given herself to him willingly and completely. She was his. Only Alexander’s obsession had stood in their way, and now he was dead. They could have everything Damon wanted._

_But Katherine had been his first love. The one that drove him mad to have her. The one he’d had to fight his brother for tooth and nail. The one he’d promised to save no matter what it took.  “You promised the same thing to Claire,” his conscience taunted him. “And I kept my promise,” another portion said petulantly. “But it’s not enough,” that hated third part added._

_Claire was certainty. Damon knew she loved him. Or did. He didn’t know if she’d ever forgive him for what he was doing. She’d probably hate him forever. It would be better that way. Better she hate him. But with Katherine there had been always doubt. Him or Stefan? Who did she love? Who would she choose? Always questions._

_God help him, Damon loved them both. He’d failed Claire. He couldn’t fail Katherine._

_Damon reached out caressing Claire’s hair. Her eyes were shut, her chest still and no pulse thrummed in her veins yet. “We were always supposed to be ‘for now’,” he reasoned. “Why couldn’t it have been you I met in 1864 instead of Katherine.”_

_He felt his heart clench at that. Why indeed. Because she hadn’t been born yet. But if she had been? If it had been her instead of Katherine? He’d never have become a vampire for one thing. She’d have been human. They’d have married, had a family. Been normal. Grown old, died with gray hair and grandchildren with their grandmother’s spirit and their grandfather’s eyes skipping around the house. And his father would have heartily disliked her and disapproved of the whole affair. And Claire wouldn’t have cared._

_But even if she had been a vampire…Damon knew he’d have done the same thing he’d done for Katherine, the same thing he knew Claire would have done for him. He’d have become a vampire to be with her forever. But he’d have had her love not Stefan. Stefan would have found a cold shoulder in Claire at worst. At least, she’d have tolerated him because he was Damon’s brother._

_Or maybe she’d have cared for Stefan too, as a sister loved a brother and the rift between him and his little brother would never have been. They’d still be best friends, Stefan happily congratulating him on his choice of bride while Stefan dutifully married dull little Rosalyn Cartwright (who Katherine had killed in a fit of jealousy in reality) like their father wanted. But Claire would have been completely Damon’s. No question._

_Damon wanted to stay._

_“She is yours and you don’t deserve her. You have to let her go. You have to set her free,” that nagging voice in his head told him. “Don’t be selfish. You can’t be selfish with her.”_

_Damon fought back the wave of emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. He’d made his choice. He was betraying them both by loving them both. Katherine came first. He’d loved her first, he told himself._

_That whole notion was just stupid. Claire married to anyone? Even him? She was too wild and free. Marriage wasn’t for her. And children? Damon mentally scoffed. He didn’t want children. Claire certainly wouldn’t. Claire, human, with children. Settled down like a good little wife. Never. That was unimaginable. It would put out her light, snuff her vibrancy. Damon would never want that. But what would she have been like, what would he have been like, what would they have been like together, if they’d met when they were human? What might they be like a hundred years from now if he stayed? Damon shook it off._

_He could hear the first wail of fire trucks. The fire had engulfed the first floor licking its way through the second and beginning to consume the third. There was a concussive boom from inside the brewery that burst windows and sent glass flying like confetti as one of the vats ignited then exploded. Alexander had stopped screaming._

_Damon couldn’t delay any longer. He had to do it now or he’d never be able to, he’d give in to the selfish desire to stay. The fire truck’s screeching siren and another vat exploding within the brewery spurred him on. His brushed the backs of his fingers down Claire’s cheek and leaned forward, placing a chaste kiss on her forehead with his face contorted with pain. He had to blink through tears to see. He felt the gentle flutter of Claire’s lashes against his jaw. She was coming around. Now. Do it now._

_“Goodbye Claire,” Damon whispered with a strangled voice. And then he felt his heart crack and shatter like broken crystal. It hurt. It hurt so damn much._

_He didn’t flip the coveted humanity switch but the rush of grief and heartache was so intense when he said those words he was forced to turn it down or collapse with anguish. He did it. He turned down the dial on his humanity like he was turning down a radio’s volume. He couldn’t turn it all the way off. If he did then he’d stay simply because it was pleasurable to do so. But he wanted to. He didn’t want to feel anything right then. The pain receded, repressed. But it was still there if he wanted it, along with the love and the guilt. Then he rose to his feet and walked away._

_***_

_Claire groaned softly, trying to sort out the dissonant cacophony of sound she heard. It took her a moment, hearing things as a muffled roar, to do so. Sirens, something roaring. She blinked open her eyes. And shut them immediately against the harsh red-orange glare of fire. Her neck hurt. Damon. Damon had snapped her neck to prevent her from going after Alexander. He’d betrayed her trust. Promised they’d do it together. Fury rushed up in Claire like a tidal wave. Then fear. Fire. Damon and Vincent had gone up against Alexander alone in the brewery and it was burning!_

_Claire forced herself upright and saw Vincent beside her. He was starting to move feebly, coming back. She breathed a sigh of relief. Vincent was safe. But where was Damon? Claire looked around her and saw no sign of him. The fire trucks were coming, quickly. They’d be here any moment. She didn’t care. Where was Damon? All her anger at him fled like smoke. She didn’t once wonder if Alexander was dead. She could only think of Damon._

_Oh God. She realized what Damon had done. He’d gone up against Alexander on his own. What if he was inside the brewery? No. No. It couldn’t be. Claire was on her feet in an instant._

_“Damon!” she called out desperately, fearing the worst. She got no answer._

_Damon!” she called again, rushing toward the building, looking for a way in. There wasn’t one on this side of the building, the flames burned too high, too hot. She ran around the opposite side, into the alley._

_“Damon!” she shrieked, completely panicked. She started to brave the flames to go in after him. She wouldn’t let him burn in there. Something flashed across the end of the alley, the one that let out onto the street. It was Damon.  She felt weak with relief seeing him there, unharmed._

_Damon stood there for a moment. His face tight and almost expressionless but his ice blue eyes were shadowed with sadness that lurked just behind them.  He was letting her see him. Letting her know she didn’t have to go in after him but he made no move to rush to her. She forgave him in a blink. He was alive. He was safe. Nothing else mattered. She started to run to him. But he only looked at her a second more and then he was gone._

_“Damon!?” Claire called confused. She raced down the alley but he wasn’t there. She stopped. Why?  She felt hands grasp her arms but she didn’t bother to look at who ever it was. She was staring blankly down the street in shock and disbelief. He wouldn’t. Damon wouldn’t just…just leave._

_“DAMON!” she screamed into the night. But only her voice echoed back to her. She felt a piercing stab in her chest that slid slowly down her heart like an icy razor._

_The hands shook her. “Claire! We have to go. Now. The fire truck is only a block away. We can’t be here when it gets here.”_

_It was Vincent, trying to reason with her. He was trying to drag her away. To get her out of here but Claire refused to be moved, rooted to the spot._

_Vincent exerted his strength and literally dragged her from the scene. She couldn’t stop staring back the way Damon had gone, dumbstruck. Finally, in blind confusion she gave in, following Vincent’s guiding hands, stumbling where he led her._

_Somewhere, cutting through the roar of the fire, the boom of exploding vats and the shriek of fire sirens… someone’s phonograph was playing ‘Bye, Bye, Blackbird.’_


	6. Chapter 6

Damon came out of his memories quietly. The IPod was playing some ballad and Claire was looking up at him, a thin line between her brows of remembered pain, her lips pressed together. It had taken every ounce of will Damon had to keep going that night, to not turn back when he’d heard Claire screaming for him in the fiery night. He’d actually run, unable to bear the sound of her calling for him.

Damon looked down at Claire, in his arms. He furrowed his brow in regret. There was something different about Claire now than there had been in 1927. There was a shadow in her eyes of sadness that seemed to be part and parcel of her soul now, if a vampire could be said to have a soul, a bitterness in the tiny lines at the corners of her full lips. Was it his fault that shadow lingered there?

Damon hadn’t thought about it then, so intent on his own course of action. But if his choosing to leave Claire had been painful enough for him to push the dimmer switch on his humanity nearly to zero, had it been the same for her? Had Claire flipped her switch after he’d left? Damon told himself he didn’t want to know the answer to that. “ _That’s what it’s there for_ ,” he tried to remind himself uselessly.

He reached up, his eyes taking in all the details of her face again like they had back in that kitchen the night of the fight, and brushed a tendril of Claire’s hair back with a delicate sweep of his fingers.

Her eyes were large and limpid, full of hurt from eighty years ago, from now and yet, she clung to him. All of Damon’s carefully constructed plans to keep a short leash on Claire went out the window like an escaping breeze. All his promises to himself that he wouldn’t fall into his own trap became lies. He still loved her. He’d never stopped. He’d foolishly walked away because of a delusional devotion to Katherine. Look how that had turned out. Damon wanted what he wanted.  He didn’t have to feel guilty about it anymore.

 The proverbial noose that had tightened around his neck pulled taut and the ground went out from under him. And Damon didn’t care even a little. Let him swing from the end of the noose he had tied.

“I’m sorry, Claire,” Damon said sincerely, his murmured voice colored with apology and gruff with guilt.

The shadow in Claire’s eyes lightened a shade and he felt the way her heartbeat quickened against his chest. The tiny inspiration of breath as her lips parted. The temptation was too much to resist. He kissed her, shyly, tentative. She returned it hesitatingly, as if she were fighting with something, wanting to kiss him and yet wanting to stop.

Damon released his hold on her mouth but he couldn’t move away. It was like it had always been, like a moth to a flame he couldn’t resist the urge. His self-preservation mechanism screamed at him that this was a mistake. Every woman he had ever loved had betrayed him, lied to him or loved someone else. He’d only get burned again. ‘ _All but Claire_ ,” his memory reminded him.

He had his hands buried in her hair and his forehead against hers. The need to kiss her again, to feel her bare skin against him was so urgent and fierce it was almost painful. He was breathing heavily. He kissed her again fleetingly, trying to divert some of it and she let him, returning it with a tiny bit more confidence, her fingers threading into his hair.

Damon’s self-control almost vanished completely in that instant. But she pulled back as if admonishing herself for almost giving in but Damon couldn’t let go of her. They were like magnets, irresistibly attracted to each other with no hope of resistance. Damon kissed her cheek and then trailed them down her jaw line, along the tender flesh of her throat below her ear. Her jugular vein thrummed against his lips like a siren call, she moaned softly.

In response, every vein in Damon’s body rushed with fire, his upper jaw throbbed.

“You’re so hard to resist,” Claire murmured huskily.

Damon kissed his way back up her slender throat. “Then don’t,” he whispered.

Claire whimpered and grabbed him. Pulling his head back around and capturing his mouth with hers with wild passion, all hint of resistance turned to dust.

Damon groaned and wrapped his arms around her as Claire deepened the kiss hungrily, his head in her hands as if she never intended to let go, as if she was going to kiss him like this until the end of time. Damon pushed her backward, intending to press her against the wall, shoving over a chair that was in the way of where he wanted to be with a clatter but at the last moment before her back met the smooth wall Claire leapt into his arms her lithe legs wrapping around his waist as she ravaged his mouth.

She found the tender spot below his ear and Damon moaned deeply, his hands buried in her hair. Claire normally smelled of sandalwood and orchids but now she smelled of his soap and she was wearing his shirt and the scent pervaded his senses. His scent was all over her. His. “ _Mine_ ,” his primal side, which had more than a small habit of driving Damon, growled and the sound rumbled low in his throat.

He could have stood there forever holding Claire’s weight in his arms. Her weight was nothing to him but Claire shifted so her body was pressed against him in all the right places, her arms around his neck and threading sensuously through his hair in such a way that it was obvious she was trying to make him go backward. He had a choice. He could let her topple them to the floor or he could go backward and find something softer to land on but he didn’t have a choice in if he did, only where.

Damon stumbled backward in a flash, dropping down on the leather couch with Claire beneath him as he kissed her again, his tongue sweeping against hers. He could feel the razor sharp tips of her partially extended fangs brush his tongue.  Damon’s own throbbed in response, in tandem with the rest of him, begging to slide out and sink into something. He could almost taste the honeyed flavor of Claire’s blood in his mouth, flowing down his throat as her teeth pierced his skin in unison, the wondrous feel of blood sharing. But Damon resisted he didn’t have the right but oh the memory was there, rushing through him feverishly.

Claire surprised him, pushing him away and down, straddling him so she had him trapped at her mercy on the couch with her in his lap. She tilted his head back her hand in his hair to keep it there and trailed her hot lips down his throat, nipping gently. Damon shut his eyes, groaned blissfully and returned the favor, pulling her head up and burying his mouth in the hollow of her throat, savoring the familiar but so long absent salty sweet taste of her skin. She made that maddeningly delightful little noise that made Damon’s whole being hum.

All of it came back to him in a tidal wave of memory and sensation that Damon had no control over. Love, lust, desire, pleasure, freedom, life.  Claire ripped his shirt open and had it off him in a blink and Damon’s hands slid up her bare skin beneath the dark blue of his shirt hugging her body, savoring the way her breath came in rapid deep swells, the heat that seeped into his fingers as he caressed her silky skin.

Damon lifted his head from her cleavage and brought her mouth to his again. She moaned softly and it evoked the same sound from his lips. He released her breathless and she looked down at him, ice blue and rich mahogany, their eyes searching each other’s with pleased and wanton astonishment. It was all still there. It was like they’d never been apart.

Claire sat up then, and deftly pulled her shirt off over her head, tossing it somewhere behind them. Damon didn’t see where it went all he saw was her hovering over him, her body exposed to him and waiting. He happily obliged, one hand slipping over her skin and cupping her firm breast while the other went behind her neck to draw it to his lips as he licked and sucked his way up to her earlobe to nibble it gently. Claire gasped delightfully.

Damon moved all at once in a single fluid motion, scooping her up in his arms and rising to his feet. Claire captured his mouth with her own with fervent need making his skin prickle and Damon left the sitting room behind in a blur, disappearing out of it through the house and up the stairs to his bedroom.

He placed her on the bed, both their hands roving and caressing, mouths tasting and savoring each other. There were no words needed from either of them. Every second made the fire between them burn hotter, rise higher. Pure unadulterated passion. He still remembered every little nuance of her body. He wasted no time rediscovering all of them.

He had both their clothes off in record time. There went another two sets of expensive clothes. Damon didn’t care. He crawled up her lithe body like a slinking panther, kissing his way up her stomach, through the shallow valley between her breasts and over her collarbone. It was very predatory, his gaze very direct as he broke away to peer down into her eyes. Her gaze was just as direct. Damon lips found hers again and she moved beneath him wantonly. Hunger pulsated through him with a vengeance. For everything that she was, her mind, her body, her blood. His upper jaw throbbed in tandem with the rest of him but he resisted the urge. He already knew she felt the same urge her partially extended fangs earlier made that apparent but he had no right. He still loved her. She still loved him but he hadn’t earned that right. He might never earn it again. But he’d try.

He trailed his fingers over her lips languidly, savoring the swollen silky feel of them before raining a white hot line of kisses down her throat, her pulse thrum against his lips like a rapid drum beat. She caught his hand and kissed the palm, her mouth working its way down to his wrist to the pulse there. Damon gasped, almost turning his wrist in invitation, almost begging her to drink. But he didn’t, afraid she’d reject it, it was too soon.

Instead, he redoubled his ministrations to the rest of her until he lost himself in it. Until all there was, was him, her and the sensation of their bodies tangled together, writhing and twining as one creature.  The only sound the rush of the blood in their veins, the fierce beating of their hearts and the soft moans and gasps of ecstasy as they explored every inch of each other like it was the first time all over again. Damon had forgotten how good she felt, how his body molded to hers and the way her breathing his name in rapture against his ear made electricity shoot down his spine like a lightning strike.

Being a vampire not only heightened your emotions, of which Damon’s were in overload, it heightened touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing. Everything. Each caress made it feel like Claire was touching every nerve in Damon’s body. Every kiss set them on fire. Every motion they made joined together made his body hum like a tuning fork of bliss and he knew it was the same for her.

Claire was still his. She’d never stopped being his even though he’d gone, even though there were eighty years between then and now. She still belonged to him as surely as she had then. This was everything he’d dreamed his reunion with Katherine would have been, the reason he’d left Claire behind to free her. And it had been Claire he could find it with, had it with, the entire time. How could he have been such a fool?

And when the end came, Claire pulled up in his arms and her legs wrapped around him, it was Damon who tilted his head back, exposing his throat with his eyes shut in invitation he just knew she would rebuke. Claire took his head in her hands and made him look at her. She’d refused him. He’d known she would but he’d found himself driven to do it, desperately wanting that last tiny bit of confirmation that he wasn’t deluding himself as he had with Katherine, with Elena. Her eyes searched every plane of his face, her thumbs caressing the edge of his jaw gently and then she rocked him to his core. It happened slowly the gentle easing of the change as her eyes turned crimson, the veins around them darkening as her lips parted so he could see her fangs.

Damon eyes widened slightly.

This was not the Claire he was used to. This wasn’t the playful carefree girl he’d known, who went where he led. Sensual to the extreme degree, yes, but she was different now and he wasn’t entirely sure if that was good or bad, something about it flared in the back of his mind in warning but he was heedless. He was too caught up in the moment because there was something overwhelmingly intimate and carnal about the way she looked at him in that moment, in a way she never had before and it made Damon’s blood burn.

She wanted him to see her do it. She wanted him to know she was accepting. 

Claire ran her hand over his chest then along the side of his neck, her fingertips brushing the pulse in his jugular before they twined into his hair. She lowered her head, her mouth grazing over his ear.

“I forgive you, Damon” she whispered in the barest whisper.

Damon sighed, his eyes sliding shut again. Then he felt the sting as her fangs sank in and the euphoria as she drank, the blood rushing from his veins in unison with all of the rest of him. His hands stroked her hair, holding her there, urging her on, as he moaned her name.

Forgiveness and love. Freely given, after all he’d done, after all this time. He couldn’t have hoped for so much. He thought his heart was going to beat out of his ribcage, as it was it thumped against it like a trapped bird

When she withdrew, he was panting as if he were drugged, his eyes heavily lidded. He felt the silky brush of her wrist against his lips and it took a beat for Damon to realize what she was doing as drunken as he now was. His eyes snapped open and he looked at her, she still had her wrist extended to him, her body still wrapped around his, his blood staining her lips, her eyes as heavy lidded as his.

Damon hesitated, his eyes asking if she was sure. She nodded once in languid encouragement. Damon obeyed, he couldn’t refuse, fangs extending and eyes flooding scarlet. He bit down gently and felt the hot honeyed rush of her blood on his tongue. It invaded all his senses and Damon wasn’t ashamed a bit when he groaned deeply in pleasure. Claire had her head flung back, her hair wild as she moved in a steady rocking motion at the same time, her mouth opened in a soft ‘O’ of rapture.

Damon felt like he was coming apart at the seams, but oh what a way to go. Everything in him lit up and throbbed in time with Claire. It was beautiful, extraordinary agony and Damon was reminded exactly why the French called it ‘la petite mort’—the little death.

 

***

“Why are we just sitting here?” Elena asked. She was curled up on the couch and looking admonishingly at her boyfriend. She had agreed to give Claire the benefit of the doubt over her attack on Stefan and she’d seen Damon’s reaction when Bonnie had failed to locate Alexander by magic. But she was not patient when it came to a crazed vampire with an agenda wandering the streets. Neither was Stefan but he understood bidding your time better than Elena did.

“Because I don’t want to stand?” Stefan suggested jokingly.

“Stefan.” Elena crossed her arms and looked cross.

Stefan sighed. Elena wanted him to march upstairs and do something right now. She didn’t like waiting when someone else might die with Alexander out there. She didn’t understand that Damon _was_ doing something—if she knew what she’d never understand how _that_ (Stefan had made the mistake of eavesdropping for a split second, he’d promptly stopped when he’d heard what was most definitely not conversation) was ‘doing something’ and not just being irresponsible. Nor that just blazing out the door, innocent lives at stake or not, might result in a higher body count than waiting.

Stefan loved that about Elena, her fierce compassion and concern for others. But sometimes her naiveté reminded him that she was human and only seventeen. He, Damon, and Claire, had over a hundred years experience dealing with their own kind. That reminded him harshly that he was a vampire and always would be. Elena made him feel human again.

“We’ve been just sitting here for an hour while Alexander might be out there _killing_ someone,” Elena insisted.

“I know that, Elena. But we can’t form a posse and turn Mystic Falls upside down to find him either. It would never work and it might do more damage than good. We have no idea where he is. Then there’s the Council…”

“I don’t like it,” Elena said her brow furrowing but it was with reluctant agreement.

“I don’t either,” Stefan agreed.

“What are they doing up there anyway? Damon won’t tell anyone anything. Claire’s like a bomb waiting to go off.” Elena huffed in exasperation. “Shouldn’t they be down here planning how to catch this guy?”

Stefan winced with chagrin. How to put this?

Elena ran out of patience. “I’m going up there.”

“You don’t want to do that,” Stefan said hurriedly, reaching out toward her.

“Why not?” Elena said incredulously.

“They’re…reconciling their differences.”

Elena looked at him oddly for his choice of phrase. Stefan gave her a look. Her eyes widened and she flushed. “Oh.” Then she went from mildly embarrassed to outraged. Stefan had known she wouldn’t understand.

“They’re doing that? Now?”

Stefan sighed and pulled his booted foot off the coffee table. “Damon isn’t just worried about Alexander. He’s worried about Claire. You saw her temper. Alexander killed someone she loved. She’s not going to take that lightly. He’s trying to keep her from going after him as soon as the sun goes down and getting herself killed. He’s distracting her.”

Stefan glanced toward the window. Sunset wasn’t far off either. Damon had his work cut out for him.

“So he’s leading her on,” Elena said. Now she was indignant for Claire’s sake. Elena knew how big a cad Damon could be. Stefan would give Elena that. No matter how mad she got, she was always fair to a fault.

Stefan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and shook his head. “No. I think he really loves her.”

Now Elena looked dumb founded. She leaned forward and mimicked Stefan, speaking in a whisper as if it needed to be a secret; regardless of the fact that Damon could have heard her if he was listening. Stefan could vouch for the fact that he was not. Damon was very preoccupied at the moment.

“He admitted it?” she asked in astonishment. She tucked a lock of her very straight hair behind her ear. Stefan almost smiled. She looked like she did when she and Bonnie or Caroline where exchanging a tid bit of particularly juicy gossip.

“No. But his denial was deafening.”

Elena frowned. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe Damon did love Claire it was that she was annoyed that he couldn’t just say it and quit with the deflecting. She shook her head and sighed heavily. “Why does he have to be like this?”

“He’s Damon.” Stefan paused for a beat. “It’s not just distraction. Vincent was Claire’s Lexi. From the way Damon talked, he was all she had. He’s terrified she’s going to turn her humanity off.”

“I thought he was all for the humanity switch.” Elena said though she winced in sympathy for Claire. Elena could commiserate with that far too easily.

“If Claire’s temper is that bad with it on, imagine her temper with it off,” Stefan suggested. He carefully failed to mention Damon had said Claire would go rage blind and kill anything in her way with it on. Stefan didn’t think Elena would take that very well. Elena gave a little breath of understanding. If grief and anger were threatening to overwhelm Claire, and it certainly looked like it was, to the point she thought about flipping her switch, the only thing that might stop her was love. It was the only emotion more powerful.

“When you put it that way.” Elena’s head tilted a little in thought. “Wait. If she flipped her switch…shouldn’t it all just go away?”

Stefan looked Elena in the eye with a knowing and solemn expression. “Yes.”

“Then Claire wouldn’t be a raging maniac. She just wouldn’t care. Period,” Elena said.

“Yes.”

 “Damon isn’t trying to keep her humanity on because he’s afraid she’ll lose it, he’s afraid…,” Elena’s voice trailed off and she locked eyes with Stefan. Neither of them had to say anything else. That told them both all they needed to know.

So what are we going to do?” Elena asked.

“I’ve got a plan,” Stefan assured her.

 

***

Damon was sprawled on his back in his bed with Claire nestled into his side, curled around him like a cat. Damon was in heaven and for the moment, he let himself forget that there was a six hundred and forty year old bat shit crazy vampire gunning for them both. There was only ‘now’, just as he’d coerced Claire into doing. He just hadn’t counted on getting caught in his own trap. At the moment, he didn’t particularly care either. He never had been very good in the impulse control department.

Damon took another drink of the bourbon they were sharing and chuckled incredulously as Claire plucked the glass from his fingers to sip.

“Disco? Really?” he asked.

Claire drank and winced with chagrin. “Yes.”

Damon made a face of amused disgust, then he laughed outright. “I still can’t believe _you_ were a Flower Child.”

“I was not. I just…flirted with the style until I decided ‘Mod Squad’ suited me better,” Claire protested with a light shrug that made her hair tickle his abdomen where it trailed over his skin. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed this. Holding someone he knew loved him and he loved in return. It felt wonderful.

“Uh huh and the ‘Free Love’,” Damon teased.

“’Free Love’ equals ‘Smorgasbord of Willing Meals on Legs’,” Claire insisted, letting the glass rest on Damon’s chest.

“I can’t see you wearing hemp.”

“Okay oh suave one. What were _you_ wearing in the sixties?” Claire said turning it on him.

Damon sighed. “Mod,” he admitted.

“Uh huh. And the seventies?”         

“Punk.”

Claire opened her mouth to tease him about it. Damon took back the glass, a finger raised in admonishment. “Do not insult punk.”

“Eighties?”

“Rockabilly meets punk. You?” he said drinking from the glass.

“Anything involving leather, huh?” Claire joked. She winced a second time with guilty shame. “Madonna.”

“So leather, lace and teased hair. What was that about leather again?” Damon countered playfully. This was the Claire he was used to. Frivolous and carefree.

Claire rolled her eyes. “Touché’”

They were discussing their fashion choices over the last eight decades. Nice, safe topic. Nothing to set anyone off. Damon was impulsive but he wasn’t stupid. He was still actively keeping Claire engaged so she wouldn’t get the hair brained idea to go hunting Alexander tonight, to keep her mind off Vincent’s death and her need for revenge. His plan had worked just like he wanted it to, only it had taken him with it. Damon glanced surreptitiously toward the heavy drapes over his bedroom windows. The light was diffuse and wan. The sun would set soon.

Stefan and Elena had come home a couple of hours ago but had wisely left them alone. Even Stefan had his boundaries; he wouldn’t barge in on two people he might find in a compromising position especially if one of the pair might try to kill him again. Damon had no such boundaries and neither he nor Claire were the least bit shy but it suited Damon just fine that his little brother did. Damon still didn’t want to face his brother. Not after the conversation they’d had at Mystic Falls High. He’d bought himself a grace period until morning because Damon had no intention of moving from his bed until then.

He gently shifted from beneath Claire, setting the almost empty glass on the sidetable and lay on his side facing her. Looking over what was his and always had been. He reached out and drew her face to him, kissing her tenderly, savoring it, then gazed at her as he played with the ends of her hair, letting it thread between his fingers coiling around them with a life of its own. He smiled dreamily. He felt a suffuse warmth throughout him he hadn’t felt in years beyond counting.

“What’s that face?” Claire asked softly, she was smiling back at him.

“What face?” Damon responded lazily, his smile brightening further.

“That face.”

“I’m happy,” Damon confessed and his smile widened. He was happy. For the first time in…Damon couldn’t remember when the last time had been. His consciousness reminded him sharply that his ‘happy’ was going to end very abruptly if he didn’t kill Alexander promptly and that he was in love with Elena too, just as he had been in love with both Claire and Katherine but Damon trounced it viciously. He was going to have one damn moment of happiness in his life. Come Hell or High Water. He could figure it all out...tomorrow.

Claire made a little noise and smiled at him again. There was light in her eyes. Damon kissed her again, rolling so he was on top of her, then placed bare fleeting ones across her cheek, on her forehead along her throat. Claire sighed contentedly.

“You can be very sweet when you want to be.”

“Yes, I can be sweet,” Damon said placing a few more butterfly light kisses beneath her ear before he peered down at her, enjoying the moment, stroking her hair.

Claire’s eyes flitted across his face and darkened a shade. She reached out and brushed his hair back, her hand pausing to cup his cheek briefly.

“I should hate you.” Her brow furrowed slightly. “But I can’t. I’ve tried.”

Claire gave him a bittersweet smile. “I never could compare to the legend that is Katherine Pierce.”

Damon grimaced regretfully. No, she couldn’t compare to Katherine. Before it had been the ‘my one true love’ principle. Now it was that he knew she was more than Katherine had ever been. Damon had just been too big a fool to realize it.

There was a long moment where Damon tried to think of something to say that would pull the conversation off serious ground and Claire played with his hair. He couldn’t think of anything to segue out of it so he chose honesty. Claire deserved that. He owed her that.

“She wasn’t in the tomb, you know.”

“What?” Claire asked.

“I got the tomb open. Katherine wasn’t there, never had been. She was free the whole time. She knew what I was trying to do, she knew where I had been the whole time and didn’t care.” He scoffed softly. “It was Stefan she wanted. It was always Stefan.”

Claire’s features softened into pity for him. He knew she could see the pain in his expression. Damon fought the urge to rebuke her for it. He didn’t want her pity, didn’t deserve it. He winced and she stroked his cheek gently.

Damon caught her hand and nuzzled it. “I never should have left.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Damon said his voice almost a whisper. “All those years I blamed Stefan.”

“He betrayed you. He forced you to turn,” Claire said, her brow was furrowed. “How could you not?” Damon knew she couldn’t understand it. Her circumstances were different from his. Alexander was nothing but a monster. Stefan was his brother.

Damon frowned sadly. He still felt betrayed and wounded by that, he always would be. That above all else had hurt the most. Even more than Stefan being favored by Katherine. But, they had reconciled. They were brothers again. Albeit it was a love-hate relationship.

“Stefan’s not Alexander, Claire. That’s not what I’m talking about. Me and my brother, we’ve made peace. Sort of. Depends on the day of the week. Besides there’s so much water under that bridge you could drown in it. What I mean is, no one forced me to love Katherine. It was my own choice. I made the wrong choice.”

Claire’s face was awash with a rapid sequence of emotions that made it hard to tell them apart. Sympathy, understanding, forgiveness and maybe bittersweet joy. She kissed him long and slow.

Damon didn’t know where they went from here and then there was Elena. He couldn’t have Elena, he could have Claire. He’d figure it out later. For now…he’d be content with what he had. There it was again after so many years. For now. They were always ‘for now’. Would ‘for now’ become ‘for the foreseeable future’? Damon didn’t know, it was too soon to tell. But he did know one thing. Alexander had to die before he could find out. He knew one more thing too. He had to get them off such serious topics. Damon had a short tolerance for ‘personal growth’ moments.

“Enough of that. We agreed to forget for tonight remember?” Damon said playfully rolling on his back and pulling Claire on top of him. Claire gasped and then laughed in surprise. It made Damon’s skin tingle. It was a genuinely pleased sound, like the tinkle of bells ringing. Her laugh made you laugh.

Damon teasingly mock-bit her seized wrists and growled. Then ran his hands through her long hair, which was tousled around her face in a dark halo and down her back.

For an instant, she reminded him of Katherine and Elena. Damon attributed it to the shared olive skin, dark hair and eyes. But Claire’s hair was darker than both Katherine’s or Elena’s, a true black, and her eyes were rich mahogany brown not the lucid dark amber of Katherine and Elena’s. It was just that he’d been talking about Katherine and Elena was her doppelganger. That was all. Damon disregarded it.

“You,” Damon said tapping the end of her nose as she lay lounged over him delightfully nude. “Need to tell me where you learned all those new dance moves.

“I’m a choreographer now. Have been for the last ten years or so.”

“Seriously? Where?” Damon asked in surprise.

“L.A.”

Damon cocked his head a bit. That, despite Claire’s adoration for dancing, wasn’t what he would have thought she would be doing. He expected to hear she had learned it on the fly at clubs while hunting. Which she may have. But as a career? Claire sang for her supper not danced.

“You’re not the prima donna at the Metropolitan Opera?”

Come to think of it, after Damon had left Claire in 1927 he couldn’t recall ever hearing about her on the opera circuit ever again. But then he’d actively avoided it. He’d loved the opera only because he loved Claire. 

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“What do you mean ‘you don’t do that anymore’?” Damon asked a little alarmed. Singing had been her lifeblood. Claire looked away.

She didn’t have to say why.

 “Alexander. Even though you thought he was dead.”

“Singing…Alexander … got me turned. It has cost me everything I have ever cared about,” she said her voice rough, her fingers trailed over his daylight ring wistfully. “It may still.”

This was not the care free unfettered evening he’d had in mind. The topic kept insisting on drifting back to the melancholy. Damon was beginning to despise the sound of Alexander’s name fervently. Alexander Favre...root of all evil.

Damon caught her under the chin and made her look at him. Her face was drawn and tight with worry and grief. There was a shadow so dark of pain that her eyes looked black. She was afraid she was going to lose him again. This time forever. Like she had lost Vincent. She was scared Alexander was going to kill him.

Damon felt a wave of renewed guilt wash over him. This was happening because of him. Because he had failed to kill Alexander the first time. Because Claire loved him instead of Alexander.

“I promise you, the only one who is going to die is Alexander.” He cupped her face. “I will never leave you again.”

Damon meant it. If anyone left this time it was going to be Claire. Whatever came, it wasn’t going to be Damon who pulled the plug. He didn’t know how he was going to reconcile that with the fact he loved Elena too. But he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

“We go after him together Damon,” Claire said with firm desperation.  Damon didn’t like that one bit, in fact he hadn’t been intending to keep _that_ promise. He’d intended to keep her out of harm’s way entirely but he realized if he resorted to his usual tactics…he’d lose her all over again.

“I swear.”

Damon meant it. He wouldn’t keep her from going after Alexander as long as she didn’t do it alone. But if it came down to it he’d snap her neck like a twig, vervain her, throw her in the basement and she could hate him for it. He wouldn’t let her die. Claire peered down at him, searching for any sign that he was lying and Damon hoped she couldn’t tell he was playing fast and loose with his promise, being very literal.

“I’m trusting you. Don’t make me regret it,” Claire said.

Damon prayed he didn’t have to. But he would always choose Claire. Even if it meant making her hate him. Damon was just that selfish. After all, he’d promised they’d go after Alexander together, he hadn’t promised he’d let Claire die doing it.

He completely ignored the fact, he kept saying he didn’t care if she hated him if it kept her alive. That he could do to her the same thing he had in Chicago all those years ago and then couldn’t. Because he knew if he did, he’d lose her. Forever.

 

***

Claire woke shortly after dawn. It was odd to wake just after the sun came up rather than when it went down. Though you couldn’t tell by looking what time of day it was. Damon had studiously ensured that the drapes stayed securely shut, not a shaft of light got through them, the room was cast in shadow.

She was still ensconced against him, her head on Damon’s chest, one leg thrown over his thighs. He had his arm around her, his head turned to the side. Damon’s skin was cold. He hadn’t fed yet and without caffeine to warm him and get the blood flowing he would remain very cool to the touch. So was hers. A hazard of being a vampire. His thick fringe of dark lashes lay against his cheek, hair tousled on the pillow and his face relaxed in slumber. He looked beautiful and harmless but Claire knew what lay behind that perfectly sculpted face.

She forgave him but she knew him. Claire wanted to believe he meant it when he said they’d go after Alexander together but she was wary. He had made a similar promise once before and it had ended with her neck broken and Damon disappearing into the night.

Every logical warning system she had screamed at her not to trust him. Not to believe that he wouldn’t go back on his word. But she did. It was stupid and naïve. But Claire couldn’t help herself because she knew beyond a shadow of any doubt why Damon had done all he had. He’d thought he was doing what was best for her and she couldn’t hate him for that.

Claire sighed softly and snuggled in as closely as she could to him. Damon’s arm tightened around her and his slack one came up to rest on her own across his chest. His lips quirked in a faint smile as he slept. It felt good to hold him, for him to hold her with no conscious thought.

Everything she’d thought buried had welled up and overflowed like a fountain with his impromptu dancing and distraction. She’d tried so hard to fight it, to tell herself no and been unable to resist him. Damon intoxicated her like a drug. She still loved him, she’d never stopped and probably never would. Claire had never resented the fact that Damon loved Katherine too but now that Katherine was out of the picture, Claire dared to hope that things could be different.

The only thing Claire could find to fault Damon for was his inability to accept that she didn’t want him to die anymore than he wanted her to. Or that she’d go to as great lengths to ensure it.  Claire was not quite the person Damon had once known.

Heightened emotions sucked some times. If she hadn’t been dumped on Damon’s doorstep she knew she would already have shut it all off. The grief was just too much. Vincent had been all she had after losing Damon to his love of Katherine.

They were still there but with requited love added to the mix it was enough to take the edge off them. In Damon’s embrace the agony had became bearable. At least for now. As long as there was hope she wouldn’t flip the switch. Not yet.

She knew now, Damon still loved her. She’d known he loved her then. Which was why when he’d walked away it had hurt so terribly. That above all else had hurt the most. She welcomed the rekindling between them with open arms because until the moment she’d let her heart lead and not her brain, she’d been buried in pain, anger and hate. Her desperate need for revenge burned like a consuming fire. It ran into her bones and flooded every vein until she thought she might drown in it. Claire had seriously been thinking of turning it all off to make it stop or killing everyone in sight in a fit of rage. Something she’d nearly done with Stefan.

Claire rose on her elbow, carefully sliding from beneath Damon’s arms and leaned over him. She traced the finely arched line of his brow, taking him in during a moment of vulnerability after so very long. It was a wonder just to touch him again.

Damon was right. While Claire couldn’t begin to forgive what she knew of Stefan, he was not Alexander. Alexander would never have pretended to care or feigned a desire to help. Stefan had. Claire had been weaker than him yesterday. Stefan could have stopped her from trying to kill him if he’d bothered to really fight back, inflicted some damage. He hadn’t. She couldn’t wrap her head around that. What did he get out of it? Damon still hated Alexander, why would he reconcile with his brother if Stefan were as Alexander was? Had she misjudged him in her fervent anger and grief as a clone of Alexander?

She hadn’t really meant the apology Damon had wheedled from her after the fight. She knew he knew it too. For Damon’s sake, for the sake of the relationship he had so missed with his little brother and for the love she held for Damon, Claire would apologize again. And mean it. Though she couldn’t promise to like him, she would try to understand how Damon could forgive Stefan his betrayal.

 Claire gently kissed Damon, savoring the taste of the lips she’d never thought to kiss again. With a hint of envy but not resentment, she touched the daylight ring on Damon’s middle left finger that bore his family crest and then cautiously crept from the bed. Damon stirred and rolled over, sleepily protesting with a murmur but he didn’t wake. Claire went to get dressed.

She arrived downstairs showered, in the same jeans Elena had leant her (how they’d survived intact was a mystery), hair pulled up in a high thick ponytail, barefoot and another of Damon’s pilfered shirts. She really needed some clothes. She had absolutely nothing here. No clothes, no car, nothing. She had her credit cards. She could easily buy anything she needed…including a car. She needed to make arrangements for that.

One accumulated money enough for just about anything when you were a hundred and thirty. With Vincent gone Claire now held all his wealth as well. Claire had, on her own merit, been quite financially stable. With Vincent’s death she was now as loaded as the Salvatores.

Vincent. Just thinking about him sent a wave of grief and anguish through her so crippling her knees nearly buckled that was followed by a torrent of anger, hate and vengefulness that threatened to choke her where she stood. “Make it stop!” her psyche begged. Claire whimpered softly and had to willfully fight it down. She reminded herself she and Damon would hunt Alexander down. He would die. She would have revenge. Damon loved her. The hurricane inside her ebbed and quieted to a dull roar. Claire swallowed and composed herself.

She was going to apologize. Going into a fit of rage again was not going to help.

 

***

Stefan sliced deftly through a mound of mushrooms with quick short flashes of the knife in his hand. Elena leaned against the kitchen counter next to him, a stack of plates clutched to her chest securely. Sunlight gleamed off the curve of the plates. She was looking at him dubiously.

“I don’t know about this.”

Stefan paused and gave her a reassuring smile. “It’ll work.” Elena’s brows quirked up. She still wasn’t convinced.

Stefan gave a soft sigh and set down the knife, then wiped his hands on the dishtowel hung over his shoulder. He rubbed Elena’s arms affectionately. “She’s like a wounded animal right now. You stick something that looks the same as what wounded an animal in front of it and they lash out, even if it’s not the same thing. She’s hurt, Elena. And justified or not she sees me as the reflection of something that caused that hurt.”

 “You don’t know that for sure. You don’t even know if what you confronted Damon with is true. I just don’t want _you_ to get hurt,” Elena said. Stefan grinned, it made him feel good that she worried about him but he was more than capable of taking care of himself.

“I’ll be fine. No, I don’t know for certain but I’m a pretty good judge of character. Sometimes with someone who’s been hurt like that, you have to show them you aren’t what they think you are before they can trust you.”

There was a dull patter on the stairs. Feet, too light to be Damon’s. A muffled whimper of vulnerability. Definitely not Damon. “Now go. She’s coming,” Stefan urged. He kissed Elena fleetingly on the forehead and shooed her out, resuming chopping mushrooms for the breakfast frittatas he was making mainly for Elena’s benefit and pretending he didn’t hear Claire coming.  Elena slipped off quietly to the dining room with the plates.

The swinging kitchen door opened with deliberate slowness. Stefan had assumed the first place Claire would go upon waking would be the kitchen in search of coffee, something to get the blood circulating. Claire stood in the doorway, even barefoot in Elena’s jeans and a white button down of Damon’s, hair pulled up on a ponytail, she looked put together. Her face wasn’t as tight as it had been yesterday, her shoulders didn’t ride quite so high with tension and grief. Apparently, her and Damon reconciling had eased some of her pain but the shadow was still there in her eyes, tempered but burning.

“Come to tear my heart out? I know Damon told you about our past,” Stefan said nonchalantly never stopping what he was doing. It was part joking tease and part serious. How she reacted would tell Stefan how to progress. Claire leaned on the doorframe. She could come no further into the kitchen; the scattered rays of sunlight splayed across the kitchen floor prevented it. Stefan had left the shades up on the windows deliberately.  If she snapped again, she’d have to face sunlight to come after him.

Claire observed him for a moment, eyes flicking over him in an appraising manner. The wary predator sizing up a potential threat. “I came to apologize.”

There was Stefan’s first cue on what to do next. If she had come to him to apologize, she was sorry she’d lost control. Stefan stopped and gave her a wry grin of mild amusement. “Because the first one wasn’t genuine?”

It garnered him a faint half grin in return. “Something like that.”

“Where’s Damon?”

“Still asleep.”

Stefan had expected the two to come down together. He was a little surprised that Claire was here, on her own. That boded well. She was taking responsibility for what she’d done. Claire’s face grew serious.

“I shouldn’t have tried to kill you. Regardless of what you’ve done, you aren’t Alexander. I’m sorry,” she said. It seemed to cost her a great deal to say it. More and more Stefan thought he was right. She’d lost control and lashed out because he reflected something that had hurt her, something she hated. While he wasn’t alright with what she had done, he could forgive her for it.

Stefan nodded. “Okay.”

Claire’s brows knotted together tightly in blatant confusion. “Just like that?” she asked in complete disbelief.

“Just like that,” Stefan said. Now he really believed he was right. She couldn’t even understand the concept that he’d forgive her transgression? Damaged didn’t begin to cover this woman. Claire’s head tilted still confused.

“You could have stopped me yesterday. Why didn’t you?” she asked bluntly.

“Because I didn’t want to hurt you. You were tortured. You’ve just lost someone, you’re grieving. You’re hurt and angry.  You lost control. I know what it’s like to lose control,” Stefan answered honestly. He moved to the window a couple of feet away and closed the shades, giving her his back and darkening the room enough she could enter it in a show of amnesty and nonaggression. When he turned back she was looking at him utterly perplexed. Like a cat whose opponent has not reacted in the way to which it was accustomed.

Couldn’t she understand why he’d understand someone lashing out in pain and grief? What had she been expecting? Him to try to stake her, threaten her?  She didn’t even seem to be able to think of anything to say. She looked dumbfounded.

“So what all did Damon tell you? That I made him turn? That I killed our Father? That I stole Katherine from him?” Stefan asked hazarding a guess.

“He told me all of it,” she said. She was still looking at him intently, arms crossed over her chest, her rich dark eyes looking at him as if she didn’t know what to make of him.

Stefan grimaced and nodded in acknowledgement. She knew he was a Ripper, or had been. Sadistic violence and threats was probably exactly what she was expecting.

“Damon loves you, you know. Despite everything you did, he always wanted his little brother back,” Claire said moving into the kitchen proper from the doorway, her voice was painfully accusatory. Stefan blinked and his jaw dropped a centimeter. It was his turn to look stupefied. He had not been expecting that nor could he quite believe it.  Had Damon told her that? Why hadn’t he ever told Stefan? Claire shook her head, her face pinching, mystified and hurt…for Damon. She loved him alright. She loved Damon the way Damon had wanted Katherine to love him. It was written all over her face.

“How could you make him turn? When you knew he didn’t want it?”

“I didn’t want to be alone,” Stefan admitted. It hurt and cut a gash of guilt into his heart to but it was true. Stefan had made Damon turn because he didn’t want to be alone for the rest of eternity. That had backfired spectacularly. It wasn’t something he was proud of and he didn’t blame Damon for hating him for it.

“That’s not an excuse,” Claire said.

“No it’s not,” Stefan agreed. What else could he say? Damon had told Claire far more than Stefan had first thought. She really did know all of it. Claire stood there and looked at him with this expression of absolute heartbreak and betrayal for Damon’s sake. There was a dark undercurrent of deep pain that belonged to her alone. Stefan hazarded a calculated question.

“Is that why you hate me? Because I did to Damon the same thing Alexander did to you?”

Claire swallowed hard, her jaw so tight the muscles flexed visibly and her eyes became very bright. She vibrated with sudden tension; her expression flying through such a gamut of emotions it was doing calisthenics. She didn’t say a word. Stefan didn’t think she could. She was fighting her emotions to keep from snapping again.

Stefan moved his head in a little motion of great sympathy. He stepped toward her. Claire was in a tremendous amount of turmoil and pain. “Let me help you and Damon,” he pleaded in a quiet consoling voice. He dared to reach out a hand, to touch her arm soothingly. She stiffened but she didn’t pull away. He was tempting fate here but he wanted her to know he meant what he was saying.

“Why do you want to? I could almost believe you mean it.”

“Because I do. Because I’m not a bad person. I’m not who I used to be,” Stefan insisted sincerely. Talk about trust issues. Claire had them in spades.

“I don’t understand you,” she admitted.

“You don’t know me,” Stefan reminded her. For all she knew of him, she knew nothing of who he was. “I regret what I did. I live with that every day. People change.”

Claire gazed at him considering, as if she might be starting to reevaluate her original judgment of him. “Does Elena know?”

Stefan cast a nervous eye toward the dining room. Elena knew part of his past but not all of. There was a large chunk of his former life Stefan never wanted Elena to know about, to see. “Some of it,” he admitted.

“But not all of it?”

“No.”

“So you’re entire relationship is based on a lie. She doesn’t know who you really are.”

“Neither do you,” Stefan countered.

He was letting Claire ask him questions she had no right to because he was trying to show her he was not what she thought he was. He thought part of the reason she was asking these particular questions was because she was trying very hard to understand him and because she was, in an odd way, being protective of Elena, who she was apparently blindly willing to be loyal too, for the simple act of human compassion. What kind of abuse did you have to suffer to be blindly loyal to someone who showed you the least bit of pure compassion?

But Stefan felt like he was under a microscope. The way Claire looked at him, now that she wasn’t rage blind and trying to kill him, was a penetrating gaze that made him feel like she was reading him like a book. She had an eerily perceptive nature about her that made Stefan want to walk away before she pried too far. A man had his secrets and his private shames, he was entitled to them.

Claire shook her head. “I don’t think you know who you are. That’s the difference between you and Damon. He doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not. But you hide behind you’re good guy façade and pretend you’re not a monster.”

“I’m not a monster,” Stefan said slightly offended.

“We’re all monsters. And until you learn to accept what you are, it will always control you.”

“That’s a bit hypocritical of you isn’t it? You’re not exactly the poster child for self control,” Stefan said trying very hard not to become angry. Claire was telling it like she saw it. Almost like a child who simply spat out what they thought without any prior thought. Brutal honesty.

“I’m not perfect. I have rage issues. I’m impulsive. I make snap judgments about people. I feel too much. I hold a grudge like nobody’s business. I’m vengeful. But I know what I am and I don’t pretend to be anything else. I don’t imagine you like me very much.”

Stefan’s offense eased a bit. Brutal honesty about herself too. She wasn’t attacking him, she was simply telling him what she made of him. How she worded it was very telling. She thought she was a monster as much as Stefan thought he was. She was just a fully embraced monster. Was that an ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ attitude?

“I don’t know you well enough to like or not like you,” Stefan said in light rebuke. He expected her to get angry. She didn’t. She stared at him a moment more and then her whole posture relaxed. Whatever conclusion she’d come to she had accepted him.

“Fair enough. Shall we start over? Clean slate, from both of us?”

Stefan considered it. She was willing to give him the same benefit of the doubt he had given her. There was something so completely simplistic about Claire, she’d made her decision that was the end of it. Yes. No. Black. White. All or nothing. He couldn’t help but like it in a strange way. You knew instantly where you stood with her. And yet there was this complex under current he could not for the life of him figure out.  

“Fair enough.” He took her hand and shook it firmly. They had an understanding. Her gripe tightened slightly.

“But know this. No matter what happens. I will always choose Damon,” she told him. It wasn’t said in the tone of a threat, only matter of fact. Damon she loved. She would choose him first and foremost. She was telling Stefan not to expect anything else of her. She was Team Damon for life. Stefan nodded in understanding and let Claire’s hand go just before Damon appeared on the threshold.

Stefan almost hoped Damon had heard Claire’s declaration that she would always choose him. He thought it might do Damon a great deal of good to know someone irrevocably chose him, to have that concrete knowledge. Plus there was a selfish part of him that thought it might help to keep Damon away from Elena. Maybe his older brother would give up his pursuit of his girlfriend in favor of the one who already loved him.

But at the same time he hoped he hadn’t because Damon would just adore flaunting it altogether too much. Claire was his loyalist, she’d never be Stefan’s no matter if they learned to be friendly or not. That would please Damon to no end. Smug Damon was intolerable.

Claire went to him the moment she saw him and Damon pulled her into his arms. They both lit up at the sight of each other. “Good morning sweetie,” Damon cooed.

“Good morning,” Claire cooed back. They kissed long and slow, arms wrapped around one another. Damon pushed a stray lock of Claire’s hair behind her ear and smiled making a pleased noise.

“Coffee?” Claire asked him. It was like Stefan wasn’t even there. He looked away a little embarrassed, pulling mugs down out of the cabinets.

“Please,” Damon replied. They still hadn’t let go of each other, indulging in little touches and caresses. Stefan almost told them to get a room.

Claire broke away and took two of the mugs Stefan had gotten out with a  brief nod of thanks. Then glided over to the coffee pot to fill them. Damon turned his attention to Stefan.

“You’re not trying to kill each other?” he asked.

“We understand each other,” Stefan told him mildly. Damon’s brow arched high at that.

“Good,” he said approvingly. Then his face contorted into a mockingly worried expression. He was eyeing the chopped mushrooms. “Please tell me you haven’t let her cook anything.”

“No,” Stefan said perplexed. “But if she wants to I’m not going to stop her.”

“Oh no. She’ll poison us all.”

“I’m not that bad,” Claire protested playfully.

Claire slid back to him with coffee for them both and Damon enveloped her again as she pressed one cup into his hand. “Thank you,” he breathed. His nose wrinkled at her teasingly. “You are many things my sexy little minx. A chef is not one of them.”

“Touche’,” Claire breathed back smiling, her head tilted back invitingly. Damon kissed her again. Stefan couldn’t take it anymore. It was so damn sweet it was making _his_ teeth hurt.

“Should I leave you two alone?”

Damon ended the kiss and looked at Stefan smugly, Claire still pressed against him. Claire looked back over her shoulder at Stefan and smiled like the cat that ate the canary. “I’ll go see if Elena needs any help,” she said. She stood on tiptoe and kissed Damon briefly again before pulling away. Damon held on until she was out of reach making a lighthearted protesting sound. She gave him a coy, flirtatious look before she disappeared out the door. Damon wiggled his brows after her.

“You two ‘kissed and made up’ in a hurry,” Stefan observed when Claire was out of view.

“Claire’s easy like that. She’ll kiss you or kill you,” Damon noted. He was still looking where Claire had gone with a self-satisfied air.

“She’s very frank,” Stefan said, he’d started idly resuming food preparations, pushing the mushrooms to the side with the blade of his knife and starting to chop a pile of spinach into tiny bits.

“That’s Claire. She’s very pure that way. Let me guess, you were pumping her for information,” Damon said sipping his coffee. Here we go, Stefan thought. Antagonistic Damon? Did someone order an inimical big brother? Get it right here!

“Not really no,” Stefan said, though he had just a little by asking about Alexander. He’d hoped before Damon had come in that he might try for more.

“Uh huh,” Damon said. “Don’t mistake ‘understanding’ for trust, baby brother. Tell me, did she answer a single question you asked her?”

Damon was so smug it made Stefan want to throttle him. It didn’t help that Stefan sharply realized he was right. Claire had gotten information out of him and he hadn’t gotten a thing out of her. He’d inferred a great deal but Claire hadn’t actually told him anything.

“Claire doesn’t have a manipulative bone in her body but she is incredible at deflection,” Damon said, he almost sounded proud of her.

“That sounds a little manipulative to me,” Stefan said. It did. She had superbly dodged him and then she’d left the two of them ‘innocently’ alone. She had to know Stefan was going to prod Damon further about Alexander. Was that why she’d took herself off to help Elena? She wanted Stefan to pry the truth out of his brother?

Damon shrugged. “No. She said what she had to say and dodged what she didn’t want to. It’s over. On to the next thing. Like it didn’t even happen. That’s not manipulation. That is avoidance at its best.”

Stefan thought perhaps Damon didn’t know his old new girlfriend as well as he thought he did. Stefan wouldn’t pass up the opportunity Claire had given him though.

“Figure out what to do about your crazed vengeful vampire yet?”

Damon snorted and gave him an irritated grin. “You just won’t give up will you?” Stefan turned from his work and crossed his arms, looking at Damon pointedly.

“No. Not exactly,” Damon admitted in annoyance.

“You said Alexander is older than Katherine. That puts him at what? Six hundred?”

“Closer to seven,” Damon said.

“Which means you have no hope of taking him on alone. You have no idea where to find him and you don’t think that’s a problem?” Stefan asked. Damon sneered at him.

“You have to keep digging.” Now Damon was angry, his eyes flashed. He hated being prodded and needled when he didn’t want to talk.

“Why won’t you admit to anything? What are you afraid of? That I might think you have some humanity left in you?” Stefan asked. Damon shook his head and turned away from him, tensing. Stefan might be safe from Claire’s rage but he might be about to invoke Damon’s. Let him, he’d gotten into brawls with his brother before. Damon wouldn’t kill him.

“Just tell me what happened back then,” Stefan pleaded, saying it gently, caring. He really did want to help but his brother was the most obstinate creature he’d ever met…except maybe Elena when she was set on something.

Damon snarled at him and paced, the tension building. He was either going to hit Stefan or break. He set down his cup of coffee with a deliberate click on the counter.

“You wanna know? Well, here it is,” Damon snapped. He spun on his heel and advanced on him. Stefan braced for a punch. Instead, Damon stopped nose to nose with him, menacing.  He trembled with the repressed desire to beat the living daylights out Stefan, every muscle corded and tight. His eyes burned with anger but something sad roiled beneath it like a tidal wave. Each word Damon spoke was spat in fury.

“Claire was an opera singer. Alexander fixated on her when she was still human. He was obsessed with her voice, obsessed with _her_. It’s why he turned her...by force.  He wanted to preserve her like some perfect specimen or a relic.”

Damon snickered darkly. “He honestly thought she would love him for what he had done. For what he had given her. He thought it was a gift. She’d never age out her prime, her voice would never fade.”

Damon swallowed with what Stefan thought was shared pain and hate with Claire. “But she hated him. First chance she got she ran. She tried to go home, had no idea what was happening to her. Her previously loving parents freaked out when she lost control and ate the maid. They tried to kill her. Her own father tried to stake her while she begged him to understand, while she tried to hug him. Then they tried to drag her, still begging, onto a flaming pyre and burn her alive. She got lucky and got away. She fled to Savannah, lived on the streets like an animal.”

“Oh my God,” Stefan breathed, he blanched in horror and revulsion. That explained a great deal of Claire’s visceral reaction to him given what she knew of him. No wonder she’d hated him on sight. Their father had done much the same to them but at least they’d never been under the illusion that he was a doting father. They’d known he hated vampires. They’d known what they were the moment they woke up in transition. Claire had had no clue what was going on. To be in that state and have your beloved parents suddenly turn on you as a monster had to have been devastating.

It also explained Claire’s blind willingness to protect Elena for simply helping her knowing what she was and expecting nothing in return. Her parent’s betrayal had marked Claire deeply. Any human who showed compassion for her without an ulterior motive and foreknowledge of her being a vampire was a light in the dark. He didn’t think anyone who pretended compassion with no gain would live very long once Claire discovered it.

Damon kept going, he looked like he might be sick just telling Stefan.

“Vincent found her and taught her how to survive as a vampire, showed her what she was.  Then I met her in 1927. They thought he had moved on, given up. They hadn’t seen him in twenty five years. Claire hadn’t seen him since the night she ran,” he said. His face softened.

“They didn’t know Alexander had been looking for her the entire time, convinced he could make her love him. And when he found out we were together? He went nuts. Promised to kill me and Vincent then take her. So I tried to kill him first.”

Damon’s expression fell into one of pain and worry. He loved her. Stefan knew that beyond the shadow of a doubt. 

“Then Alexander wanted to own her. But this time he’s doesn’t want to capture her and put her in a gilded cage.  She rejected him. This time he’ll kill her.”

The last came out in a hushed tone, fervent, desperate.

Stefan stood there and blinked in stark surprise. Damon had just confirmed everything he’d believed outright but Stefan had been expecting some subterfuge on his part at least. The knowledge that he’d done something to provoke this whole thing, brought it on himself. But he hadn’t. Damon hadn’t done a single thing wrong. He’d fallen in love and been trying to protect Claire. It had been selfless. Now he was scared he’d lose her. Stefan felt for him. He knew what that felt like.

“Damon, I had no idea,” Stefan muttered. Damon grimaced at the sympathetic expression on Stefan’s face. He hated appearing human, vulnerable. He despised when his ‘big-bad-vampire’ mask was torn away.

“Don’t pretend you care.”

“I do care. We’ll save her,” Stefan promised his brother.

“I don’t need your help,” Damon seethed. He was defensive and angry, he felt exposed.

“Why won’t you let me help you?” Stefan asked.  Damon stepped back and his shoulders slumped a bit. He wouldn’t look at his brother.

“It’s my problem, Stefan. I’m the one who tried to kill him. I’m the one who let him get away. It’s my mess I’ll clean it up.”

Stefan blinked again. Damon felt guilty about all of this and it wasn’t even his fault. This morning was just packed full of surprises. It was almost like he was talking to the Damon who existed before he’d been turned. The human Damon. Damon was taking responsibility for something. Hell must have frozen over. “You feel guilty.”

 “What do you want from me?” Damon said in exasperation. “You already know everything, so what?” He looked at him with accusation as if Stefan were trying to hurt him. Damon broke completely and for a moment it was 1864 again and Damon was vulnerably, heartbrokenly baring his soul to his little brother.

“You want me to admit I have feelings for her? That I love her?” he said. His teeth were clenched, and dare Stefan say it, Damon’s eyes were bright with the beginnings of tears.

 _My God, he **really** loves her_.  _He loves Claire as much as he ever did Katherine, as much as he does Elena. Why then, did they part ways? He’s desperately in love with her. She loves him just as much. Why would Damon ever give that up?_

“I feel, okay Stefan?  And it sucks. You want to know what sucks worse? _She loves me._ This is happening because of _me_.  Again.”  Damon poked himself in the chest with his index finger in self-accusation. He waved his arms around animatedly as he talked, his emotions transferring to his movements in wild hand sweeps. “He wants to kill her because she loves me instead of him.”

It was very sad actually. Damon finally had the one thing he’d always wanted and the fact Claire loved him at all, was why her life was in danger. Someone was trying to kill them both for loving each other. Alexander was a monster, of the highest order.

“For once, you didn’t do anything wrong, Damon,” Stefan insisted. “You fell in love, there’s no shame in that. You thought you had killed him, it’s not your fault you didn’t know he survived. I’m gonna help you. Like it or not. So you might as well get used to it.”

Damon glared at him hotly.  “Why? Don’t act like this isn’t the best day of your life. This should have you jumping for joy. I’m right where you were. You can have revenge without even trying.”

Stefan couldn’t deny there was a certain about of epicaricacy to it. The shoe was on the other foot now and Stefan couldn’t help but take a smidge of enjoyment out of it. But that was all. Just a touch of it and he’d never let his self-righteous pleasure that Damon was now in Stefan’s shoes stop him from helping his brother. No matter what pleasure Stefan took in it, Damon didn’t deserve this. Claire didn’t.

That didn’t stop him from professing both his genuine desire to help and rubbing a tiny amount of salt into the wound.

“You’re wrong. I’m not you. I don’t want revenge. I never did.  I do care. I care because you’re my brother and I _was_ in the position you are now. You love a girl and a psycho is trying to punish you for it because he thinks you took what belonged to him.  Nobody should ever have to go through that.  We’ll find him and kill him.”

Damon narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t missed the salt that came with that sugar.  He sighed.

 “Fine.” He looked back at Stefan with an equal measure of hate, love and reluctant gratitude. Stefan looked at him with genuine caring and just a hint of smugness.  Brotherly love at its best.

Team Salvatore was back in action.

 

***

Elena set out enough plates for four, arranging them on the prim embroidered table cloth in front of fine antique chairs upholstered in red brocade. She didn’t actually know if Damon or Claire would be joining them, but it was the polite thing to do. Vampires didn’t strictly need to eat real food, but many enjoyed it simply for the taste.   She was trying to be polite.

The room was very quiet. Almost painfully so. She wished she could hear what was going on in the kitchen but the Boarding House had been built so long ago that it was very sturdy, with walls thick enough to muffle voices in the next room into silence. She briefly envied Stefan his vampire hearing. She wanted to know what was going on.

Elena added silverware to the place settings and then moved to the heavy curtains, pulling them closed most of the way so sunlight wouldn’t intrude. Claire didn’t have a ring to protect her from the deadly qualities it represented to vampires.

Elena really hoped Stefan was right about Claire. Elena wanted to like her. She had at first but her unprovoked attack on Stefan had Elena wary and still a little angry. All Stefan’s reasoning aside, Claire had attacked him and he’d only been trying to help her. She turned away from the curtains, intending to go fetch glasses.

Claire was there, leaned against the wall nearest the door and furthest from any sunlight. She was sipping a cup of coffee and watching her. Elena bit down on a yip of surprise, sucking in air as if she could draw the sound back in. It came out as a choked gasp. She hadn’t even known Claire had come in the room.

“Claire,” she said her hand to her chest to catch her breath. “You scared me.”

Claire face blossomed apologetically. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.”

“Make a little noise next time.”

“Can I help?” Claire asked. It was perfectly innocuous. She asked it like a proper house guest. No anger, no tension.

Elena looked at the table as if she didn’t know what they needed out of reflex. “Um, well we need glasses,” she said. “That is if you wanted to eat. I wasn’t sure if you would want real breakfast or just blood or….” Elena trailed off realizing she was babbling because she was slightly nervous. She didn’t know what to say to Claire.

“That would be nice,” Claire said. She smiled and the gesture was disarming. It was open and genuine despite the grief and pain that resided behind her eyes.

“Great,” Elena said.

“I’d wait to get the glasses though. Stefan and Damon are talking.”

“Oh,” Elena said, she stopped short. Now what?

Claire sighed and came toward her, deftly skirting the few beams of sunlight that managed to escape the curtains. It had its own sort of sinuous grace to it, her bare toes edging around them with all the experience of over a century spent avoiding them. She set her coffee cup on the table.

“I’m sorry,” she said heartfelt to Elena. Elena blinked. Claire was apologizing to her?

“I attacked Stefan without reason. I shouldn’t have.”

“No. You shouldn’t have,” Elena admitted without an ounce of apology for it. “But I understand. You lost control. But just because you are a vampire doesn’t mean you have to act like one.”

Claire’s brow furrowed a little. “You mean act like Stefan?”

Elena nodded. “He wouldn’t be the worst example to follow.”

“I’m _not_ Stefan. And whether he acts it or not. Stefan _is_ a vampire. He’ll _always_ be a vampire, Elena,” Claire said, her head tilted to the side. It wasn’t said as if she meant it like a rebuke or sarcasm. She said it as if she was trying to make Elena aware of something.

Elena shook her head, long shining hair waving around her shoulders like a cloak. “Being a vampire doesn’t mean you have to try to kill people. You sound like, Damon.”

“You can put a tiger in a cage but it’s still a tiger,” Claire said. Her face was pulled into a look of great concern.

Elena scoffed slightly. Claire went from what sounded like a genuine apology to what sounded like a veiled warning…about Stefan of all people. “Vampires aren’t tigers, they’re people. Are you trying to say Stefan is dangerous to me? Stefan would never hurt me.”

Claire looked Elena up and down for an instant and then her face went pleasantly blank as if she’d flipped a switch and become perfectly personable again. “Of course.”

There was a moment of very awkward silence. “I am sorry for attacking him. I hope you can forgive me,” Claire said again. She looked truly worried that Elena wouldn’t accept the apology.

“You should be telling Stefan this not me,” Elena insisted.

“I did.”

“Oh,” Elena said. “I forgive you. Just…don’t do it again.”

Claire nodded. “I won’t,” she promised fervently and Elena believed her. She didn’t quite understand why Claire felt the need to apologize to her for what she had done to Stefan but if she needed to feel she had proven she was sorry so be it. And the gesture was appreciated none the less.

Elena let it go. Claire’s apology was a little odd but it seemed real. If she could apologize, Elena could accept it and give her a second chance. “How are you holding up?” she asked, concerned herself.

 She knew Claire had been very upset yesterday. It was what was driving her. She smiled gently, a comforting expression. ‘I understand. It’s okay to grieve’, it said. Innocently unaware of what encouraging an emotionally distraught vampire to feel might cause. There was a reason a vampire’s instinct was _not_ to feel.

Pain flashed in Claire’s eyes and Elena was sorry she’d asked. She’d touched the open wound and made the grief hurt again. She flashed back vividly to when she’d lost her parents. Elena knew that look. She knew that pain. She failed to see, because she wouldn’t ever think it herself, the hate and the rage that flowed behind the grief and the pain.

Claire swallowed and made a noise that sounded like she was stifling a choking sob and expelling it through her nose.

Elena frowned in commiseration, her eyes large brown wells of empathetic sadness. Without a word, Elena closed the distance between them. She wrapped her arms around Claire and hugged her.

Claire went rigid as a board as if she were taken aback by the gesture. Then hesitantly, Claire returned it and her body relaxed. Elena tightened the hug a little. “It’ll get easier.” Claire tightened the hug in return. For just a moment vampire and human ceased to matter. Seventeen versus one hundred and thirty meant nothing. They were just two girls sharing pain. Pain shared is pain halved the saying went.

The moment was shattered abruptly by the stern ringing of the doorbell.

 

***

 

Before Damon or Stefan could say anything else to each other they were rattled out of their painfully revealing chit chat by the ringing of the doorbell. Damon and Stefan moved to go answer it. Claire—looking a little rattled herself--and Elena flowed out of the dining room into the hall to follow, all of them harkening to the bell’s beckoning.

Damon thought it just as well. He wanted to be furious that Stefan had poked and prodded until he got the truth out of him. He wanted to claw that smug, knowing look right off his little brother’s face. But he couldn’t. Damn Stefan all to Hell, he couldn’t. Because he was being _nice_. He was being _understanding_. He was being _helpful_. He was being his little brother. Can’t live with him, can’t kill him.

Damon just knew Stefan was going to take far too much pleasure in having this to hold over Damon’s head. _See Damon? You do have some humanity left in you. See? You did something selfless. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah._ Insufferable dick.

Elena almost outpaced Damon to the door and Damon flash stepped, cutting her off. He didn’t want her to answer it first. It might be an enemy not a friend come a calling.  “Wait.” He placed a hand on her shoulder and Elena gave him a perturbed glance for it.

Stefan sidestepped around them to go to the door. Claire looked between Damon and Elena, tilting her head slightly for an instant. They were all on the edge of the foyer. Far enough back to evade the sunlight that poured through as Stefan opened the door.

“I’m here to see Damon,” said a tense female voice.

“Uh, sure. Okay,” Stefan said.

Damon relaxed. It was the Sheriff. No imminent threat but that didn’t mean Liz Forbes hadn’t come bearing bad news. In fact, if she was knocking on their door looking for him, it had to be bad news. He went to greet her.

“Liz,” he said smiling dashingly. “What a pleasant surprise.”

The short haired blonde woman, Sheriff of Mystic Falls, mother of Caroline Forbes—friend of Elena and former play thing of Damon’s--who happened to be a vampire now, which the Sheriff had no clue about, looked at him pensively. “We need to talk.”

“Come in,” Damon said stepping back from the doorway. The Sheriff entered and gave Stefan a brief smile in apologetic greeting. Oh yes, she came baring bad news.

As the Sheriff walked further into the foyer, Damon shut the door and grimaced. He’d known it was coming but still, he’d hoped.

“Hi, Elena,” the sheriff said as her eyes lit upon her.

“Hi, Ms. Forbes.”

Then the sheriff saw Claire standing there in Damon’s shirt and bare feet. She looked back at Damon and Stefan.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had company.”

Damon waved her apology off. “It’s no trouble.” He came to the Sheriff’s side. “Sheriff, this is Claire Dominic. An old friend from college,” Damon introduced, lying smoothly. He leaned over toward her ear a bit and in a stage whisper said, “She’s a parapsychology major.”

Another blatant lie. He did it as easily as breathing. Damon was setting the groundwork to bring Claire ‘in’ to the ‘secret’ Town Council without raising suspicions if need be and creating a cover just in case. Isobel, whom Damon had turned before he ever met Elena but who just so happened to be Elena’s birth mother, had been the parapsychology major. She’d hunted Damon down and begged him to turn her, tipped off by John Gilbert, Elena’s birth father cum Uncle. She was also the former wife of Damon’s best friend, History Teacher/Vampire Hunter Alaric Saltzman. It was complicated.

“I see,” Sheriff Forbes said. She extended her hand to Claire and smooth as silk, Claire took it, shaking it firmly but not too firmly. She smiled that charming ‘win over anyone she’d ever met’ smile.

“Claire this is Sheriff Liz Forbes. She keeps our quaint little town safe.” Behind her back Damon made a motion with his eyes at the sheriff that said, ‘Tread carefully.’

“Pleased to meet you.”

Stefan and Elena watched without saying anything. Neither had to be told what Damon was doing.

“How long have you been in town?” the Sheriff asked, she eyed Claire’s ensemble. Ha, there she went probing, eternally suspicious and never finding out the truth. Except that one time. Damon preferred not to think about that. What a mess that had been. Thank God for compulsion.

Caroline and Claire would get along marvelously, Damon thought. They could compare notes on parents who hated their vampire selves (though Liz had been compelled to forget she had known what her daughter was) and both were vain creatures who adored fashion. Claire just happened not to make Damon want to kill her on a regular basis. Then again, if Caroline perturbed Damon, Claire might just kill her on principle.

“I got in yesterday,” Claire said. She looked down at herself. “Forgive my appearance. The airline lost my luggage. Damon and Elena were kind enough to lend me something until I can make other arrangements.” Claire could lie as casually as Damon. Most vampires could. It was more or less a requirement if you wanted to have anything like a normal life. Learn to lie and make them believe it. Compulsion wasn’t always convenient on the spot, especially not in Mystic Falls.

“I hate when that happens,” the sheriff said equally casual. “I once had one of my suit cases sent to New Zealand by accident. Took me two months to get it back.”

Claire laughed appropriately and if you didn’t know her you’d honestly believe she was genuinely amused and oblivious to what the sheriff was doing. So went the dance. Sheriff Forbes could throw a million questions at Claire and never get anywhere.

“How long are you going to be staying? Mystic Falls has some very interesting historical locations,” the sheriff said still probing and making is sound like she was cordially suggesting places to sight see.

“I’m not sure yet. I’m on a little vacation but I don’t have a time limit. So I suppose as long as I can impinge on Damon and Stefan’s hospitality without annoying them.”

“You’re welcome for as long as you like Claire,” Stefan said. Claire looked at him and for an instant Damon was afraid she’d break character. He saw stark surprise flash in her eyes that she covered so fast only a vampire would have seen it.

“Thank you, Stefan,” Claire said. It was said with such proper manners and social grace even Damon couldn’t tell if she meant it sincerely or if she were simply still playing the game. Stefan had unsettled her.

Stefan smiled, a bare quirk at the corners and something flashed in his eyes Damon couldn’t put a name to. Déjà vu, maybe.

The sheriff smiled too. “Well in that case. I’d be happy to show you around sometime.”

“That sounds lovely,” Claire responded. Damon grappled for an out to get the sheriff away from everyone. He wanted to know why exactly she was here.

“You said we needed to talk?” Damon said bringing the sheriff back to the point. She looked at Damon.

“Yes, we do,” she acknowledged. She sounded less than enthusiastic about it.  Damon looked at the others.

“If you’ll excuse us,” Damon said and led the sheriff toward the door that led to the back courtyard.

***

Outside in the courtyard, Damon stood with the Sheriff.  She looked apprehensive, casting a glance back toward the house.

“Claire… there’s no chance she’s a…”

“A vampire? No way. I’ve known her for years. Besides, Claire loves the sun far too much to be a vampire,” Damon said quickly dissuading her of the notion.  It hurt just a little to comment on Claire’s love of sunlight so flippantly.

“Sun might not be a factor anymore,” the sheriff said ominously. Damon swallowed a wave of anxiety. That was not good to hear. If the Council suspected vampires of walking around in the day again, an idea Damon had worked very hard to shoot down and succeeded in, they might all be cooked.

“What are you talking about? What’s going on?” he asked cutting to the chase. Sheriff Forbes was a very professional woman, she wouldn’t mind doing away with the extraneous conversation.

“A vampire attack.”

Damon feigned horrified shock. “Another one?” the sheriff nodded solemnly.

“A female victim was found at the high school near the bleachers on the football field. She was a student. Her throat was torn out, completely drained of blood. It fits the M.O.,” the sheriff said, then she shook her head as if she were confused. “But the medical examiner puts time of death at sometime yesterday afternoon. It happened while it was still light out. That’s just not possible.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a vampire,” Damon suggested. Mentally he was cursing.  That was none too subtle on Alexander’s part. Damon had been at the high school yesterday and then someone turns up dead by vampire attack afterward…during the day? Alexander was upping the ante in a hurry to expose Damon, and subsequently every vampire in Mystic Falls. Now Damon knew without a doubt Alexander had a daylight ring.

“What else could it be, Damon? You know anything else that drains it’s victim of all their blood?”

“The IRS?” Damon joked deadpan. Liz gave him a put upon look and Damon endeavored to look humble.

 “The official story for the town is another animal attack but the Council is in an uproar over this. I know I should have called you first. You’re the Head but this was so public everybody knew about it before I had time to cover it up. I came as soon as I could. If vampires have figured out some way to walk around during the day there’s no telling who they might be. We might never find them.”

“It’s okay, Liz. You did your best. Doesn’t being drained of blood make it really difficult to accurately pin point time of death?” Damon asked, quick to offer a reasonable explanation.

“Yes,” the sheriff admitted. “But not usually that big of one.”

“First time for everything”

“Maybe,” the sheriff said reluctantly, her eyes flickered away and she grimaced. “There’s more.”

Damon gave her a look to go on.

“The victim’s boyfriend, Brad Cooper, is missing. He wasn’t a small guy, he’s a tackle on the football team. It would have taken someone with a lot of strength take him.”

“Maybe he’s your vampire,” Damon suggested, cursing a whole new blue streak in his head. He already knew what had happened to the football player. If he was missing and not very publically dead, Alexander had him. Probably compelled as a minion and a spy.  Alexander would likely not have turned the boy, it was easier to control a compelled human than a vampire and Alexander would want someone who could get around during the day. Unless he had a witch on hand, Alexander wouldn’t be able to readily supply his newly turned lackeys with daylight rings. God, Damon hoped he didn’t have a pet witch. It was Chicago all over again, only worse.

“I doubt it. The victim was found by another student. Apparently, she had skipped class to go make out with her boyfriend. When they didn’t come back a friend of theirs went looking for them. She’s the one who found the body.”

Damon seized the possibility of a witness wildly. It might be the only lead they would get. “Did she see anything?”

“No. I’m afraid not. She was a complete mess when my deputies got there. This whole thing is a mess, Damon.”  The sheriff glanced up at him pleadingly, seeking the help of ‘Damon Salvatore, vampire killer, Founding Family member and Head of the Council.’ Ha, if only she knew, Damon thought. He reached out and rubbed the sheriff’s arms consolingly.

 “We’ll figure this out. Have there been any other attacks? Has anyone else gone missing?” he asked taking the helm as Liz expected him to.

This was why Damon had insinuated himself into the Town Council and worked up to being the Head. Everything went through him, he could control what they did and did not know. He decided how investigations proceeded. Thus, he kept every supernatural what’sit in town from being exposed and summarily executed. It also gave him a deep well of information and resources when things went funky in Mystic Falls.

“There haven’t been any other attacks yet but I haven’t looked into missing persons. I didn’t think I needed to. That’s usually only an issue when a vampire has turned someone. You don’t think the boy’s been turned do you?” she looked very worried.

“I don’t know, Liz. But let’s cover all our bases on this. If he has been we may have a much bigger problem on our hands,” Damon said seriously. He didn’t think he had been but might as well be better safe than sorry. Damn it all to Hell, Alexander was going to collect himself a flock of cronies to do his dirty work.

The sheriff nodded.

“Look into those missing persons reports and it would probably be a good idea to get some vervain into the locals while you’re at it. The smaller a victim pool the more likely we are to catch the vampire. When was the last time you had Matt Donovan put it in the coffee at the Grill?” Damon added. It wouldn’t actually stop Alexander from killing if he really wanted to but it would keep Alexander from being able to compel as many people to use as minions and, if Damon got incredibly lucky, might put Alexander down for the count if he ate someone pumped full of vervain.

“It’s been a few weeks. I’ll stop by there on my way back to town and have it done.”

 “Good. I’d like to keep this as quiet as possible. The fewer people who know the better. We don’t want the town freaking out and thinking we’ve got a vampire on a turning and killing spree out there. Don’t do anything until you clear it with me, I don’t want you going in alone,” Damon said. He was actually a little worried about the sheriff. He considered her something of a friend and going up against Alexander if she found him first would very likely get her killed. He’d lament that.

Not to mention Alexander would blab about all of them the instant he thought he’d die without accomplishing his mission. That would require Damon to compel and/or kill a _lot_ of people, if the Council didn’t execute them first. That would be a pain in the ass. There were too many ways this could go horrible awry for Damon’s liking.

“Of course,” the sheriff agreed, she smiled wanly in appreciation of his concern.

“I’d also like to bring Claire in on this. Her field of study could make her a valuable resource,” Damon added bringing things home. If he had her set up as a ‘consultant’ of sorts no one would question their actions or her.  He refused to acknowledge the side benefit. If Claire stayed once Alexander was dead, she’d already have a foundation laid down here. He refused to acknowledge that he wanted her to stay.

“She knows it’s real?”

“Yes. In fact,” Damon said playing Claire’s credibility up. “I’ve learned a thing or two from her _I_ didn’t know.”

“Of course. Do what you think is best,” the sheriff said agreeing with no argument. She looked relieved to have Damon taking over and bringing in someone else to help as well. Being Head of the Council had its perks. Damon silently gloated.

“I don’t imagine she’s going to be happy her vacation is being interrupted to hunt down a vampire,” the sheriff laughed weakly.

“Who does?” Damon said, grinning cheekily. The sheriff smiled a little more at ease. All was going to be okay. Damon Salvatore was handling it now.

“Thanks, Liz. I know Claire will be an asset to this investigation.”


	7. Chapter 7

Damon escorted the sheriff out with quiet promises to solve the problem.

“Damn it,” he cursed softly as he shut the door. The others were grouped in a huddle in the living room, as if life had paused while he was out of the room. But Claire was holding a mostly empty glass of blood she had just had hidden behind her back from the sheriff and Elena was sucking the juice from the last tidbit of a cantaloupe from her fingertips. Stefan just looked broody as ever. Not paused, waiting.

“Breakfast is ready,” Stefan said.

“Forget breakfast,” Damon said. He glanced at the table full of alcohol bottles and saw the blood bag Claire had used behind the rows of bottles. He helped himself to a glass and downed a large swig. “We have a problem. And when I say ‘problem’ I mean global crisis.”

Everyone looked at him expectantly.

“Alexander struck again. This time he killed a girl at the school, in broad daylight.”

“So he’s definitely got a daylight ring,” Stefan noted.

“Not only that but he took the victim’s boyfriend. Guy named Brad Cooper.”

“I know him,” Elena muttered distressed. “His girlfriend is Ashley Black. We had first period together Freshman year.  Oh my God, poor Ashley.” Stefan wrapped his arm consolingly around her shoulder and she leaned into.

Claire sighed deeply and gritted her teeth fiercely, her fingers tightening around her glass so much Damon was surprised it didn’t shatter.  She knew what the boyfriend being taken meant and knowing Alexander had a daylight ring had to be burning her up.

“Do not freak out on me,” Damon warned.

“I’m not,” Claire said but Damon could tell it took all her self-control not to at least fling her glass against a wall.

“What do you mean ‘he took the victim’s boyfriend’?” Stefan asked.

“He kidnapped him.”

“Why would he do that? To turn him?” Elena asked.

Damon shook his head, downing the rest of his blood in a second gulp. “I need a drink,” he muttered and filled another glass with bourbon. Day drinking, hurrah.

“He won’t turn him. That’s too big a pain in the ass. He’ll keep him compelled. He’s done this before,” Damon said.

“Done what before?” Elena asked. Stefan looked dour, Damon knew he was putting it together.

“He’s building his own spy network. Alexander won’t turn him because as a vampire the guy might not cooperate. That’s the same mistake he made with Claire. If he’d kept her human he could have controlled her permanently. Once he turned her, he couldn’t control her anymore,” Stefan said.

Damon gave Claire a glance. Her face was unreadable, a carefully controlled mask. Talking about Alexander turning her was adding fuel to the fire. ‘Don’t do it,” Damon thought.

That had indeed been Alexander’s biggest mistake. The moment he’d turned Claire into a vampire he’d made his prey into a predator. Predators tended not to like being controlled and turning someone to control them had a nasty habit of coming back to bite you in the ass. They inevitably stabbed you in the back.

Not that a great deal of vampires didn’t do it. It was one of the top four reasons to turn someone. The others being boredom, revenge and love.

“It’s what he did in 1927. How he found us without us knowing he was there for a year. Every human we knew, he compelled to do his dirty work,” Claire said bitterly.

 “You never knew they were compelled?” Elena asked in astonishment.

Claire shook her head, she was very tense. “No. Not until it was too late. Alexander is very subtle about it. You won’t know who’s under his control until he wants you to.”

“Which means that it could be anyone, anytime, anyplace. He might have been here planting covert operatives long before now. There’s no telling what he knows about us. I’ve got Liz getting me any missing persons reports that might be someone he’s taken before we were aware he was here. Hopefully he hasn’t built an army yet,” Damon said. Elena blanched at the implication.

“He might be crazy but he’s crafty,” Stefan admitted angrily.

“Too crafty,” Damon agreed. “We need to find him. Before he dumps another body with the words ‘Damon Salvatore is a vampire’ stamped on its forehead.” He dropped down onto the couch with his glass of bourbon, wedging himself into the corner and propping his feet on the coffee table. He motioned Claire to him with his hand and she came, sitting down in his lap with her glass of blood. He looped his free arm around her waist lightly. Claire lightened visibly in his embrace. Damon didn’t even think about the display of affection, it came naturally.

Elena arched a brow a little at Stefan knowingly while Damon wasn’t looking and a smile played on her lips she fiercely fought to repress. Stefan returned it in kind. ‘Yep. He loves her. She loves him,’ it said.

Oblivious, Damon went on. “In the plus column? Everyone in our inner circle is either a vampire, a werewolf, or on vervain. He’ll have to go further outside our network to get his lackeys. I’ve got the sheriff lacing the drinks at the Grill with vervain so that will cut it down some.”

Claire looked at him incredulously. “Werewolves? They’re just a myth.”

 “Not so much. We found out the hard way,” Damon said. “No more full moon watching for you. Especially not here. A werewolf bite will kill a vampire. A tip to the wise, don’t piss one off by putting wolf’s bane in her drink on a full moon.”

Claire wrinkled her brow and shook her head in disbelief as Damon continued.

 “This stays between the four of us. No one else. I didn’t want the Council involved but Alexander already shot that all to Hell. I’ve got them side tracked for the moment, but it won’t last”

“Isn’t living in a town where they have a Council specifically for killing vampires sort of tempting fate?” Claire asked.

“Not when you’re the Head of it. What can I say I like to live dangerously,” Damon said impishly, he mockingly bit Claire’s arm with a little growl. Claire chuckled faintly and shook her head. Stefan rolled his eyes at them.

“Why just us? Caroline could help. Bonnie could too,” Elena reasoned. Damon shook his head in negotiation. 

“Alexander would kill them. No one else gets involved. The less they know the better,” Damon said firmly. Elena looked at him contemptuously.

“I mean it, Elena. In fact, I don’t want you involved anymore than you already are. We’ve got enough problems trying to protect you from Klaus,” Damon insisted.

“I’m not going to sit here while he tries to kill you,” Elena protested. “I already told you, I’m not going to watch anyone else I care about die. If I won’t do it for Klaus, I’m not going to do if for Alexander.”

“Who is this ‘Klaus’ who’s after Elena anyway? Why does he want her?” Claire asked. No one answered her in the heat of the argument escalating.

“Elena,” Damon said warningly.

“I’m serious, Damon!”

“So am I.”

“You promised we’d do things my way.”

Damon snarled at her, his face contorting in barely repressed anger. “Fine. Have it your way.”

Elena crossed her arms and looked petulant. Damon glared. Claire looked between them shrewdly.

“He’s right, Elena,” she said softly. “You’re a walking blood bag to him. A target. Alexander means to hurt us before he kills us. That means anyone either of us cares about is in danger. You’ve already got someone after you. There’s no sense in making it two.”

“I’m not going to be sidelined and made a prisoner,” Elena said curtly.

“That’s a little extreme isn’t it?” Damon said sarcastically.

Elena glared at him. “You’re letting Claire do it.”

“Claire’s a vampire and frankly I’d love nothing more than to snap her neck and throw her in the basement until I have Alexander’s head on a stick,” Damon snipped. Claire cut a dark glance at Damon which he purposely ignored.

“Throwing her in the basement might be a bad idea with what’s down there,” Stefan interjected. No one heard him.

“What’s in the basement?” Claire asked. No one answered her again.

“But I can’t, she made me promise too. She’s as hard headed as you,” Damon said completely exasperated with both women in his life. Claire gave him a look and Damon quelled inside. Did she see it? Did she know that history was repeating? Did Claire see Damon loved Elena as well as her?

He hoped not. Claire already knew she’d been in competition with Katherine in 1927 for his love. He didn’t want her to know now she was up against Elena. With a sharp jolt Damon realized now he was the ‘Katherine’ to their ‘Damon and ‘Stefan’. He hated it. He didn’t know what to do.  He reminded himself that unlike Katherine, he loved both women. Katherine had only ever loved Stefan.

He loved Elena but could never have her. He loved Claire and could. Hell, he did have her, she was as much ‘his’ as she had been in 1927. But he was right back to the same thing that had driven him away before. It wasn’t fair to Claire to only be able to give her half his heart. Should he just say to Hell with it, let Stefan have Elena and give his all to Claire? A great part of him wanted to do just that. It sounded like the logical thing to do but his heart couldn’t just stop loving Elena. He’d tried, God had he. Love didn’t work like that.

Damon refused to think about it. He had too many problems. He could only deal with one at a time. Alexander was the immediate one he had to deal with. He’d focus on that.

Stefan saved him having to weasel his way out of the more exposing part of the discussion to his surprise and outrage. “I agree with Elena.”

“What?” Claire and Damon said in unison.

“Not for the same reasons but I agree. We can’t just leave her here, alone at the house. If Alexander has a cache of human minions they don’t need an invitation to get in and hurt her. The safest place she could be is with us. She’ll have three bodyguards at all times.”

Elena smiled at Stefan widely and looked triumphant. She did all but stick her tongue out at Damon. Damon narrowed his eyes at her. Claire rolled hers.

“I don’t like it,” Claire said.

“Nobody likes it. But it’s the truth,” Stefan said tiredly.

Claire sighed.

“I know, I hate it when he’s right too,” Damon sympathized. Stefan gave him a smug grin and crossed his arms over his chest. Damon smirked derisively back at him. “You win. Happy, Elena?” Damon snarked.

“Yes,” she said with as smug a smile as her boyfriend. Insufferable, the both of them.

“Now, how do we kill Alexander before he kills half the town?” Stefan asked getting back on track.

“We have to find him first,” Damon noted with a snort. “He’s not going to show his face without being provoked. In the mean time, he kills and compels his way through Mystic Falls. He’s got us right where he wants us. That’s why he left Claire tortured but alive, relatively speaking, on the doorstep. He wants it to hurt first.”

Claire finished off her glass of blood. “What Alexander wants,” she said, leaning forward and setting her glass down with a deliberate click. “Is for us to be terrified before he hurts us. Leaving me alive was meant to let us have just enough time to fearfully clutch each other and wail, while he destroys our lives around us _then_ kill us,” Claire said.

“Nothing more annoying than a vengeful vampire” Stefan muttered.

“Look at you,” Damon said smiling at Claire, prideful. “When did you become so savvy?”

Claire shrugged lightly.  Stefan gave her a knowing glance.

“We have to draw him out somehow,” Elena said, sitting down abruptly on the couch across from Damon and Claire.

“’We’ are not doing anything. You’re not driving this bus, you’re just along for the ride. Remember?” Damon snipped at her. Elena frowned deeply.

“We ignore him,” Claire said.

“How is ignoring him going to draw him ‘out’?” Elena said with ire.

Damon looked at Claire a moment, his eyes glittering darkly. “I like the way you think.” He looked back at Stefan and Elena. “We ignore him because what he wants most is to know we’re afraid of him before he swoops in for the kill. So we don’t give it to him. We give him exactly the opposite.”

“I’m confused,” Elena said.

“He means, that if they act as if they aren’t afraid and ignore he’s here at all, he’ll get irritated that his plan isn’t working and come out of hiding,” Stefan translated.

“So we pretend he’s _not_ killing people and compelling them to be mindless soldiers?” Elena asked, perplexed and indignant. “How does that help?”

“No, Elena,” Damon said with a sigh. “We do the same thing we did in 1927, that’s his trigger. He’ll be so busy being pissed at us for ignoring him and being the annoyingly cloying lovebirds that he’ll spend all his time following us around and won’t have time to go on a killing spree.”

“We have to take it out of town. Charlottesville maybe. It’s only thirty minutes away,” Stefan said. “That will draw him away from people here but let him have options so he can still compel enough flunkies to keep him comfortable.”

“True, it would be unfortunate to get caught by our own safe guards,” Damon noted.

“You’re agreeing with this?” Elena said in outrage. “You’re all talking about killing Alexander…by doing nothing and letting him victimize people in the process.”

 “Alexander has spent a century being obsessed with Claire. Seeing her happy with Damon is what makes him go over the edge. It’s the opposite of what he wants. It will make him so mad he’ll snap and come after them directly without all the games before hand. It deflects his aggression off innocent people and on to them,” Stefan explained. “They’re baiting him.”

“Then we stake him, rip his heart out, something poetic.” Damon said. “You know what this means brother” Damon looked delightedly self-satisfied. Stefan nodded but he didn’t look happy about it.

“What does what mean?” Elena asked looking between them.

Damon appeared so pleased with himself he was nearly bursting, Claire on his lap like a Casanova in an aftershave ad. “We’re going to be living the vampire high life for a few days.”

“What?” Elena said flatly. Then, her voice becoming incredulous, “You’re going to go party it up and feed on innocent people? That’s your plan?”

“Stop being so judgy, Elena. Nobody’s going to die because of it. Besides, you bought the ticket to this ride with your little gambit a minute ago. Now you’re just going to have to deal with it. You wanted in, you’re in,” Damon said smugly.

“It’s not right. You can’t just victimize innocent people to get what you want,” Elena complained loudly.

“It’s either this or Alexander kills whoever he wants, however many he wants. We’re trying to curb the body count. Not increase it,” Claire put in.

“They’re right. They have to behave the same way they did then. If they don’t Alexander will notice something is strange about the way they’re acting,” Stefan defended Damon, though he sounded less than approving of it.

“I don’t like this,” Elena protested sternly.

“Let go and enjoy it, Elena. How often do you get to party all night to catch the bad guy?” Damon urged. “Just don’t get upset when I pretend that I couldn’t care less about you. Stefan can take care of himself but if Alexander knows I give a damn what happens to you, he’ll use it against us.”

Elena gave a long-suffering sigh. “Alright, fine.”

“Would you recognize Brad Cooper if you saw him again?” Stefan asked.

“Of course. I’ve known him since fourth grade.”

“Good, then you’ll be able to tell us when he’s following us.”

“Now, what shall we do first?” Damon mused, tapping his lips with his index finger in contemplation.

 

***

A few hours later, Damon was standing out on the porch with a glass of bourbon watching birds light from one branch to another as they began to settle for the night. The sun was almost below the horizon, painting a harsh orange slash where the sky met the earth. Claire had Elena dragged upstairs to raid her clothes for something suitable to wear. They had decided to make a spectacle of a shopping spree. Claire didn’t have the wardrobe, or in fact any wardrobe at all, to play at the old life they had led. The shopping was a necessity but they would make it a part of provoking Alexander. Four socialites, two doting boyfriends and their lady loves, with money to burn tearing through the best shops Charlottesville Virginia had to offer. Two birds, one stone. It would drive Alexander mad.

That had left Damon and Stefan to wait on their women while they made themselves presentable, and left Damon with time to think. Stefan stepped out on the porch behind him.

“They are still up there,” Stefan said in mild awe. Damon quirked a grin, rolling his glass in his hand so the bourbon swirled but he didn’t stop watching the birds.

“Claire’s a vain thing. Getting her out of the house in less than two hours is unheard of,” he said it idly, swigging his drink, but his agitation with himself colored the comment. He’d played things off earlier, chosen to deliberately ignore his dilemma with Elena and Claire but it kept resurfacing to nag him.

Stefan came to stand beside him. “You sound irritated,” he observed, leaning against one of the porch pillars.

“There’s a vengeful, crazed vampire out there who wants make my life Hell and then kill me,” Damon said, deflecting. “You’d be irritated too.”

“You’re worried,” Stefan said shortly.

“No,” Damon insisted. Stefan gave him a look.

“Okay, maybe a little,” Damon admitted, understating his concern. “But that’s not what’s bugging me.”

“Then what is?”

Damon grimaced and threw back another gulp of bourbon. “I’ve become Katherine.” He didn’t dare say he was in love with one woman he could never have and one he could but felt he didn’t deserve because he loved the other one. Neither of which he knew what to do about.

Stefan’s brow wrinkled, mildly amused. “I’m sorry? You’ve become an evil, manipulative, selfish, lying little bitch?”

Damon gave him a sideways glare for his attempt at humor.  Stefan grinned.

“I’ll tell you who does remind me of Katherine though,” he said. Now Damon furrowed his brow.

“Besides Elena?”

“She doesn’t really look like her but the way Claire did that whole song and dance with Sheriff Forbes? She didn’t miss a beat. Perfect charm, just effacing enough to look humble and polite, the sparkling smile. It was all very ‘Katherine’. Perceptive too.”

Damon laughed and quirked a brow at Stefan as if to say he’d lost his mind. He couldn’t help it. It was too funny. “I’ll give you the ‘perceptive’ thing but Claire is no ‘Katherine’. She’s the exact opposite.” In a bare whisper he muttered, “She’s more.”

Stefan shrugged dismissing it and changed the subject giving no indication if he had heard Damon’s slip of the tongue.

“Will Claire be able to keep her temper in check out there?”

“I’ll keep her under control.”

“You think this is going to work?”

Damon looked at him then, eyes deeply serious. “It has to.”

Their conversation was cut short just as the last ray of light faded from the sky casting everything into deep blueish/gray shade. Elena and Claire were ready. Damon and Stefan turned at the sound of the door opening and looked at the two. Damon’s mouth quirked in a lopsided grin. Claire had managed to make Elena’s ‘trendy girl next door’ look slightly sexier and edgier on herself, pairing a short-waisted jacquard jacket with a shawl collar that cinched tightly beneath her ribs with a teal camisole tank, jeans and the ankle boots she’d shown up wearing. Her hair was still in a ponytail but now it was careful tousled to compliment her outfit. Elena was as endearing as ever in a purple long sleeve t-shirt with lace accents over a white tank top, jeans and matching purple converse sneakers. Though they’d dressed from the same closet, they couldn’t have looked more different.

“They come!” Stefan teased with mockingly wide eyes. Elena rolled her eyes at him.

“Stefan,” she chastised. Stefan shrugged.

“We were beginning to think you’d never get done.”

“Yeah well, you have no idea how long it took to find something of mine that didn’t pinch Claire in all the wrong places. She’s not quite as small as me.”

“Well, I think you did just fine,” Damon said.

“Just to be clear,” Damon said to all of them. “From this moment forward. We all play our parts. Alexander has to believe what we’re feeding him. Otherwise, it won’t work. We don’t know who might be watching and listening. No judging or outbursts of self-righteous indignant, got it? So, if anyone is thinking of getting cold feet, speak now. I don’t want this going wrong if someone can’t handle it.” Damon looked at his brother’s girl. “Elena.”

“I won’t,” Elena assured him. Damon looked to Claire and his face softened. She was ramrod straight. He rubbed her arms and felt the tension vibrating through her. He wasn’t sure if it was barely reined hate and anger or fear…or all three.

“You going to be able to do this?”

She nodded tightly and took a deep cleansing breath, willing herself control. The tension melted off her in a sheet. She looked up at him and those mahogany eyes burned. “Let’s do this.”

“I still don’t see how you can make shopping a spectacle,” Elena said. Damon turned his gaze on her and grinned wickedly.

“You’ve never been shopping with Claire.”

 

***

“I have never seen so much stuff,” Stefan exclaimed. He was carrying multiple bags in each hand. “Do you really need _all_ this?”

Damon snorted. “She hasn’t even gotten started good yet.” He was no less weighted down than his brother, Claire’s arm through his as she sauntered along beside him down the brick paved walkway.

“In Claire’s defense not all if it is hers,” Elena said amiably.

“What? One bag?” Stefan said incredulously.  “Some of this stuff looks like torture devices.”

“Some of it is,” Elena told him.

“Beauty takes work,” Claire said, amused by Stefan’s exasperation.

“Beauty is pain you mean,” Elena countered. Claire laughed at that.

“That too. Just be glad corsets aren’t in fashion anymore.”

Elena’s expression as she walked bracketed between Stefan and Damon, a safety precaution Claire didn’t think Elena had even noticed, said she was very glad corsets weren’t in anymore.

 “A hundred and sixty three years and you’ve never realized how much effort it takes for the ladies to look so good?” Damon asked his brother but his eyes were on Claire adoringly. “I know I appreciate it. Immensely.” She knew he was playing it up for anyone that might be watching but Claire was reveling in it. She had to; otherwise she’d be basking in hate, anger and grief instead.  She took comfort in Damon’s steady presence and the knowledge that they were laying the bait for Alexander. She’d have her revenge. She just had to be patient.

“It’s one thing to know it; it’s another to have to help them purchase all the paraphernalia. I’m never complaining about how long it takes you to get ready ever again,” Stefan said shaking his head at Elena.

They had taken over downtown Charlottesville, arriving half an hour before the popular pedestrian mall was scheduled to close down for the night. It was well and truly dark now, the brick walk ways illuminated by street lights and the glowing signs of the shops with their large display windows showcasing the best they had to offer. It had been a simple case of Damon compelling the property manager to announce ‘extended hours’ to ensure that the place stayed open and active. People delightedly thronged the plaza, thrilled with the chance to shop until they dropped up to dawn.

The two couples had made quite a show of leaving Mystic Falls, making sure they were noted at the gas station, stopping to swing into the Grill for coffees to go (and none of the vampires drank since it was spiked with vervain). If anyone were watching they had plenty of opportunity to follow. Which is exactly what they wanted.

Claire charmed the staff of every store they went into, resulting in them trailing behind the little group waiting on them hand and foot. Charmed not compelled. Why bother with compulsion when it was much more satisfying to watch people fall over themselves to please you just because you were waving a no limit credit card around? Besides there was an art to charming people into doing what you wanted without using compulsion. Claire’s vanity was showing a little in flaunting it.

Elena was still constantly watching them warily when one would spring to her elbow with a drink or dash in to pick up something she dropped, unused to being treated like she were royalty come for a visit. Damon, Stefan and Claire acted as if they took it for granted.

The doting train of employees made the group conspicuous but not too conspicuous and it kept a huddle of people around them at all times. It was very public and very noticeable. Many a head turned trying to figure out who the four were. Were they celebrities? Spoiled rich heirs to a fortune five hundred company on vacation?  Another reason to take their charade out of town. No one knew them here; they were whoever they chose to be.

The amount of attention they were deliberately attracting was more than even Claire usually indulged in. But, if you were going to live the vampire high life to antagonize your monumentally obsessed, revenge seeking stalker go big or go home. Right?

The four of them had already blown through Sephora (for makeup and hair styling implements). Where Damon and Stefan had happily stayed out of the debate of what shade of eye shadow went best with what lipstick. Half way through Elena and Claire arguing curling irons versus flat irons, Claire, Damon, and Stefan had noticed a man in a 49ers jersey with graying hair ostensibly following their progress, hovering on the edge of the crowd just out of most people’s area of perception. None of them said anything but they shared an acknowledging glance between each other. The man might be one of Alexander’s minions on their trail.

They had pretended they didn’t notice him and perused Fredericks of Hollywood (for lingerie and sleepwear). Where Elena had spent the entire time trying not to continually blush as Stefan trailed after her while she browsed through the racks of sensuous fripperies. The quintessential ingénue. Though Claire caught her eyeing a tasteful chemise when Stefan wasn’t looking. Claire had it stashed away in her bags to give to her later.

Damon on the other hand had taken great pleasure picking and choosing among the wares, selecting things that he would enjoy seeing Claire attired in. Which Claire had been more than happy to indulge him in. She had more lingerie than she actually needed because of Damon, not because of her need for enough intimates that she could wear two sets a day for a week and not wear the same thing twice.

He’d also delighted in picking something particularly risqué out and teasing Elena with it. Speculating aloud that he bet Stefan would love her in it. Elena had turned scarlet and then become indignant. Damon had just laughed at her.

Stefan had decided turnabout was fair play and insisted he bet that Claire would adore seeing Damon in a silk banana hammock. Damon had countered by unabashedly announcing Claire preferred ‘au naturel’ to silk any day. Claire had casually picked up a split back satin thong that screamed ‘effeminate boy toy’ that was so hideous Claire wouldn’t even have subjected her worst enemy to wearing it and mentioned that she thought Damon would look incredibly sexy in it. When she’d bought it under his disbelieving eye, he had been speechless. Stefan and Elena had laughed all the way out of the store. Damon had declared there was no way in Hell he was wearing it but he desisted teasing Elena. The man in the jersey had casually been browsing through a magazine rack at a cart just outside the store.

The outing was progressing so utterly normal, save their trailing football enthusiast, that it was almost possible to forget that this was mostly a charade to infuriate Alexander. It was almost possible to pretend that she was just out carousing with the man she’d loved for more than eighty years along with his little brother and his girlfriend. To forget that Vincent was dead, not at home awaiting her return with open arms and a smile of welcome. To make believe that it wasn’t all she could do to keep the torrent of rage and grief inside her in check or that the only thing that kept her able to was the presence of the man on her arm. Almost.

It was also a painful reminder of a life long forgotten. One that had included Vincent and Damon, and Claire without a care in the world. She couldn’t remember what that felt like anymore. She wasn’t the frivolous creature she had been in 1927. She was still as vain as ever and she indulged in excess without a single regret but too much had changed.

Even with Alexander presumed dead, Claire’s life after Damon left had never been the same. That event had shattered the last vestiges of her innocence. Nothing was certain, nothing was safe. It could all be destroyed in a moment. At least as a vampire, she was stronger and faster, more powerful, than anything that would dare to threaten her, save another vampire. As a human she’d been meat, a perpetual victim. Prey. Claire would never ever be prey again. The sacrifice for that slim security was the humanity and the sun she so missed.

Claire had been so distraught over Damon leaving, Vincent had shipped them both out of the country for the next decade, trying to immerse Claire in the extravagant luxury of Europe for fear that she would flip her switch and undue all the work he’d done to bring her back from the ledge. Afraid if she did he’d never get her to turn it back on. He’d entertained the idea of hunting Damon down and killing him as well but Claire had forbade it much to Vincent’s annoyance. He’d never understood how Claire could forgive Damon for what he’d done.

It was a miracle she wasn’t as embittered as Damon. Or was she? She’d left the two Salvatores alone deliberately, knowing that Stefan’s curiosity would lead him to keep prying until Damon gave in and told him the truth. She’d known simply because of their antagonistic relationship that Stefan wouldn’t leave it alone.

Why had she done it? Because she knew, that Damon alone had no hope of defeating Alexander. Even she and Damon together might not have a chance but the three of them could take him, if they could catch him off guard. She wouldn’t let Damon pull the same stunt he had in Chicago and she wouldn’t let him die killing Alexander. Having Stefan on board, against Damon’s will or not, gave Damon less of a chance to do anything to stop her without having to answer to Stefan for it. He would have to keep his promise. Claire was going to kill Alexander, with or without Damon.

She still didn’t know what to make of Stefan. She hated him for what he was and denied. For what he had done to Damon. But his seemingly genuine desire to help confused her. His admission that he regretted his past and that he’d done what he had to Damon because he didn’t want to be alone gave her pause. She related to that all too well. His easy forgiveness of her attacking him in a fit of rage made her doubt her first assumption of him but his willful denial of what he was disturbed her.  If you were a vampire, be a vampire. But she would wait and see. Perhaps he would prove that he wasn’t as bad as she thought he was.

Elena made Claire feel conflicted in the extreme. Claire was beginning to like the girl simply for who she was and not just because she fit the exalted criteria for sainthood Claire held so precious in a human being. Claire would protect Elena for that alone but she offered consolation and empathy as if the fact that Claire was a vampire mattered not at all. How Elena didn’t look at her, as a human, and not see a monster was beyond Claire. It mystified her. She was treating her like she was…human. But Claire wasn’t, she’d never be human again.

To Claire, Elena was terrifyingly innocent and naïve. Claire had tried to make her point as gently as possible but it seemed to stubbornly elude Elena. She was romantically involved with a vampire and yet seemed completely ignorant of what that really meant. She saw vampires through Stefan colored glasses, misguidedly believing that they could be ‘good’ vampires. Good equaling not being what they were and pretending to be human.  That they weren’t predators who lived for the hunt, the feed and the kill, they were just humans with fangs.

Sure they could eat bunnies or live off blood bags and never compel anyone unless it would prevent them being killed or but the monster was still there. It wouldn’t go away just because you ignored it, in fact it made it worse. Claire knew from experience. Claire feared things would end in heartbreak for Elena when she inevitably came face to face with the reality.

In short, Claire was confused. Everything seemed surreal. Vincent was gone and there was no bringing him back. Even if she killed Alexander, Vincent was dead. She was with Damon again and her heart refused to quite believe it was real. Stefan might not be the monster she had believed and Elena acted as if she accepted her for who she was and not what. Everything she wanted, save one, might be within her grasp if they could only destroy Alexander once and for all. It couldn’t last. There was always a catch. Any minute she’d wake up to find Alexander had only been screwing with her mind.

She’d gotten so lost in her thoughts she didn’t realize she’d stopped in front of a display window and it was Damon’s voice that brought her back to the here and now. She had been staring blankly at the clothes in the window without really taking them in.

“Hmmm,” he mused. He looked at the dress and then leaned in to kiss her behind the ear. Claire gave a little sigh when he did. She’d needed that. She needed him. She wondered if he knew how much. She couldn’t lose him. “Red always was your color,” Damon said unaware of her thoughts and thinking she’d been admiring the dress in the window.

 Claire looked at it. It was almost burgundy, single shouldered with the kimono style sleeve slashed in the middle, leaving it to flow in ruffles down the side all the way to the hem that fell at mid-thigh. It was definitely something she would pick out. Even after eighty years Damon knew her tastes. 

Damon squeezed her hand once and gazed very directly into the shop’s window. Claire looked at his reflection and just over Damon’s shoulder saw the reflection of the man in the jersey, hovering behind them at the customer service kiosk. He was idly looking through the flyers on the counter but his eye kept wandering to look at them for an instant and then slide away. Definitely following them. The man ran his hand over his head and Claire noticed that he had a bandage wrapped around it. Injured. Human. A wound sustained when he tried to resist Alexander before being compelled possibly?

Before Claire could say anything Damon was tugging her inside the store. In short order the clerks were all over them and they were ensconced in the dressing room, which proved to be boutique style with a curtained off changing area that let out on a sitting space in front of it, furnished with a number of plush deep chairs so one could parade around for one’s companions in possible purchases.

Most of the process was straightforward with Claire mixing and matching everyday casuals  while Elena did the same but when they finally got to the more elaborate pieces it got much more enthusiastic. Claire came out and did a little circle around the floor in a pink cowl necked blouse and fitted slacks. Damon arched a brow, holding his hand backward without looking for an attendant to fill his nearly empty champagne glass. It was dutifully filled.

“Pink?” he said dubiously. Claire stopped and frowned at him.

“What’s wrong with pink?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with pink?” Elena agreed. She was trying to choose a color in one style of top and didn’t seem to be able to make up her mind.

“That’s coral not pink,” Stefan remarked, he still had the majority of his champagne since he’d been sipping his. Claire’s empty glass set on the table between Damon and Stefan awaiting her return from trying on clothes. Elena, being underage had a glass of soda. They could have compelled the staff to serve her champagne but she’d insisted on just the soda.

“Looks pink to me,” Damon said. “Claire’s not a ‘pink’ kind of girl.”

“This coming from the man whose entire wardrobe consists of black and gray,” Claire retorted with a delicate snort.

“This is John Varvatos!” Damon shot back indignantly, pinching the fabric of his shirt between his fingers for emphasis.

“And? It’s still black.” Elena said.

They’re ganging up on us,” Damon whispered to Stefan.

“They are ganging up on you, Damon.”

“I say we mutiny,” Damon teased.

“This was your idea,” Stefan pointed out.

“I’m kicking myself.”

Elena looked at Claire. “I think it’s cute.” Claire gave Damon a smug smile. “Don’t you think so Stefan?” Elena went on.

Stefan threw his hands up in immediate surrender. “Oh no. I am not getting in this.”

“Two for, one against, one abstaining. Majority rules,” Claire said. “I win.” She turned on her heel and sashayed back in the dressing room without a backward glance. Elena snickered. Damon leaned over and smacked Stefan in the chest with the back of his hand.

“What?” Stefan cried indignant.

“Whose side are you on?” Damon hissed.

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” Stefan insisted. “Oh really? ‘That’s coral not pink’,” Damon mocked. “You’re supposed to back me up!”

Elena sighed heavily. “I can’t decide which color is better. The green or the lilac one,” she said frustrated enough she looked tempted to throw both tops back in the pile of apparel they were working their way through. 

Claire’s head poked out of the dressing room curtain. “Get both then.” Her head disappeared again.

“Have you _seen_ the price tag on these? They’re two hundred dollars. A piece!” Elena said.

“So?” Claire’s voice called slightly muffled by the curtain. “You like them. Get them. My treat,” she said dismissively. Elena boggled at the curtain.

“I couldn’t possibly. That’s way too expensive.”

“It’s not polite to argue,” Damon said and gave Elena a warning look. Elena furrowed her brows at him but relented.

“Okay, if you insist,” Elena said. She looked at Stefan who shook his head not to say anything which only served to confuse her further.

Claire came out of the dressing room. Damon sat there and stared, he looked dazzled and utterly smitten.

“Perfect,” he breathed.

She was in the dress Damon had pointed out in the display window, it was gorgeous and the look on Damon’s face would have been worth any price. Claire smiled wickedly, biting her lip suggestively. Damon set his champagne glass aside and went to her, sliding his arms around her sensuously. Claire leaned into him. “You like it?”

“I love it,” Damon purred, caressing a line down Claire’s neck, just over the carotid that throbbed and pulsed under his finger tips. She shivered pleasurably but it reminded her sharply that she was actually quite hungry. As if Damon knew what she was thinking he tilted her chin up on his finger and said  “You know what we haven’t done? We’ve been here for _hours_ and not had a _single_ thing to eat and I’m starving. So what will it be?” He looked around at the store’s employees giving them euphemistic names as he went. “Ethnic? Asian fusion? Mexican? Maybe some good old American comfort food?”

Claire perused the clerks with the same scrutinizing eye as Damon, looking over his shoulder. The fellow in the 49ers jersey was hovering over a rack of woman’s sweaters nearby trying not to be conspicuous. Claire looked up at Damon.

“Mmmhmm,” he murmured. He knew the man was there too. Put on a show for the spy. Claire licked her lips and hissed in contemplation. Who to eat?

“Asian,” Claire decided. Damon looked at the Asian man near the cash register who was busy tallying receipts.  “That is a very fine choice, honey. You go get out of this,” Damon trailing a finger over the neckline of the dress, “And I’ll go set that up.” Damon said. He laid a quick kiss on her lips before he let her go and slipped away after the Asian main course. Claire disappeared back into the dressing room to get out of the dress. Wouldn’t do to get blood on it before she’d even gotten to wear it out.

Elena looked at Stefan and went a shade paler. “Are they...?” she began to ask. Stefan reached out and caught her wrist pulling her playfully into his lap. He kissed her neck, putting his lips next to her ear and hers next to his.

“Are they going to…?” Elena whispered. Stefan played with her hair using the apparent make out to cover their conversation, keeping his voice to a whisper.

“Yes,” he admitted. Elena stiffened in his lap and Stefan squeezed her knee in warning. “You knew they’d be doing this.”

“I don’t know if I can sit and watch them do this,” Elena said.

“You have to,” Stefan whispered. “See the guy over by the sweaters? The one in the 49ers jersey?”

Elena cut her eyes, careful to avoid being noticed looking. “Yeah.”

“Recognize him?” Stefan said toying with the collar of Elena’s shirt as if he were contemplating taking it off.  Elena brushed his hair back playing along.

“No,” she admitted.

“He’s been following us all night,” Stefan said. Elena had to fight the urge to turn and look at the man sharply.

“Should we even be talking like this?” she asked her voice hushed, worried they’d give the game away.

“See the bandage on his right hand? “ Stefan said. Elena peered through the fall of her hair as Stefan teasingly stroked her throat. “He’s human. As long as we whisper he can’t hear us.”

“Shouldn’t we go get him? Say something?”

Stefan nuzzled her hair. “No. We want him to go back and tell Alexander what he saw. Remember? Have to make it look real.”

Elena caressed Stefan’s head, as if she were urging him to keep kissing her neck. “I don’t like this. You’re not going to eat anyone are you?”

One of Stefan’s hands trailed over to arm of the chair and he drew it back holding a scarf. “I’m going to pretend to. We don’t want Alexander to know you aren’t compelled or that I don’t drink human blood anymore.”

Damon came strolling back, escorting the Asian man whose eyes were blank and mindless by. Damon had compelled him into complacency. He grinned wickedly. “Enjoy your meal, brother,” he said.

“At least I don’t have to go hunting mine,” Stefan said for effect and then pushed Elena’s hair away from her throat, kissing along the vein there. She felt him bare down slightly in mimic of a bite, the fact he wasn’t hidden by Elena’s hair blocking the jersey man’s view. Elena swooned appropriately, she knew why they were doing it, but she didn’t like this. Not even a little. Claire drew back the dressing room curtain and Damon urged the Asian man inside, shutting the curtain behind him.

Inside the confines of the dressing room Damon sidled next to the Asian man. The dressing room was spacious but with three people it was a tight fit. Claire’s mouth was already watering.

“Dinner is served,” Damon said. Claire felt her eyes shift, felt the throb as her fangs extended responding to her hunger. Damon smiled faintly, his doing the same. In a blink Claire sank her fangs into the soft flesh of the man’s neck and drank deeply, savoring the gout of thick, rich blood that rushed over her tongue. Damon shoved the man’s sleeve back and latched onto his wrist, the soft sounds of sucking filling the small space. The man didn’t fight, he never made a sound. Compulsion was a wonderful thing.

Claire pulled back gasping at the same time Damon relinquished his hold on the man’s wrist. Both their mouths stained with blood.

“It’s been so long I’d forgotten how good blood tastes when it’s fresh,” Claire said. Between being drained and kept starving for weeks by Alexander and the diet of bag  blood she’d been living on Claire’s craving for something straight from the source was suddenly overwhelming. Bag blood was as good as fresh for food, it held all the same benefits but it just didn’t compare to the rush of drinking it from the vein. It was like drinking ice cold water when you’d been wandering in the desert. As opposed to being given water that was clean but stale and hot as the sun baking the sand.

“That’s right, Alexander had you for weeks before he dumped you at our place didn’t he?” Damon said, he licked his lips clean. “Take your fill,” he urged. Claire wasted no time obliging him, burying her fangs in the man’s neck again, drinking him in.

After a moment, Damon’s hand touched her shoulder. “We both fed on him. You’re gonna bleed him dry.”

Claire didn’t let the man go. The hunt, the feed, the desire to kill her prey had hold of her. That basic nature that drove all vampires, whether they liked admitting it or not.  She’d accepted it long ago. “Just a little more,’ she thought.

“You’re gonna drain him, Claire,” Damon warned. “If you want more, I’ll get you another one.”

Claire made herself stop. She let go, gasping. “Hungry girl,” Damon said, he looked a little bothered for an instant but then he took the man by the shoulders and captured his gaze. “You’re help was most appreciated. Why don’t you go get cleaned up? Forget all about this.” Damon flipped the collar on the man’s shirt up to cover the bite.

The man nodded dumbly. Damon paused a moment as if waiting for something then shrugged and opened the curtain for him. He stumbled out and wandered off.

“You didn’t compel him,” Damon noted, his brow was slightly furrowed. Claire almost flinched before she could stop herself. She hadn’t intended to compel the man but Damon didn’t know she wasn’t the girl he used to know. Claire hadn’t compelled a meal to go dancing off in euphoria in years. She couldn’t remember the last time. Why bother? Not as if they really liked her for it. She’d given up the deluded notion that they’d ever like _her_ long ago. Snatch, eat, erase, no frills. She wasn’t sure why but she didn’t want Damon to know that, didn’t want him to realize how jaded she was now.

“I got caught up in the moment,” Claire excused. “Haven’t had a fresh meal in weeks.” She wiped the blood from her lips and licked her fingers.

“I see that,” Damon laughed. He dismissed Claire’s words as truth and they partially were. “Let’s see about seconds.”

“He still there?” Stefan asked. Elena was still sitting in his lap pretending to be the amorous girlfriend and being Stefan’s eyes, the scarf Stefan had been holding around her neck, hiding what wasn’t there.

“Yep,” she said. Just then the curtain opened to the dressing room and the Asian man Damon had compelled came stumbling out, his shirt collar popped as he staggered off in the direction of the bathrooms. A moment later Damon came out as a petite little blonde woman trotted past the dressing room. Damon stepped in her path and smiled. The woman came up short in surprise.

“Hello,” he intoned charmingly.

“Hi,” the woman said back brightly taking in the handsome man Elena knew she saw.

“This may seem very forward but you’re just so pretty.”

The woman beamed at him. “Thank you.”

“And please don’t scream,” Damon said, compelling her. The woman went rather slack jawed her face blanking. Damon turned her and walked her backward through the curtain, his eyes still locked on the woman’s. “You’re about to have a very bad night.”

“Another one?” Elena hissed in outraged astonishment.

“You promised you wouldn’t judge. It’s just an act,” Stefan whispered. “Alexander will have lots to be irate about when his spy gets back. It’s better than the killing spree Alexander will go on if we don’t draw his focus away.”

“I know, I just…I hate seeing innocent people used like that,” Elena relented reluctantly. “You can’t tell me they’re not enjoying it.”

“You’re not enjoying yourself? You looked like you were,” Stefan said.

“I was before…,” Elena made a weak gesture toward the dressing room.

Damon, Claire and the blonde woman came stumbling out of the dressing room laughing.

“Now then, you run along and forget. The rest of your night will be spectacular,” Claire said gazing into the woman’s eyes.

“Okay,” the woman said giddily and skipped off, a scarf wrapped around her throat the same as Elena but Elena knew what hers hid was real.

 Damon grabbed Claire around the waist as Elena and Stefan watched kissing her deeply. “Glutton,” he teased Claire when he pulled away.

“You love it,” Claire teased back.

“You know I do,” Damon said kissing her again and laughing at the same time.

“Okay, that is not acting,” Elena said to Stefan in a whisper.

“The guy in the jersey is still watching,” Stefan murmured cautiously.

Elena frowned but subsisted as Damon, hand in hand with Claire came traipsing back to them.

“How can they do that?” Elena wondered.

“I’ll explain later,” Stefan urged.

Elena’s distress must have showed in her face because Claire looked concerned and said, “Something wrong?”

Elena smiled and shook her head. “No. Everything’s fine. All full now?” She hoped fervently the answer was yes, she didn’t know if she could pretend to be alright with this, with watching Damon and Claire feed off innocent human beings as if it didn’t matter, like they hadn’t a care in the world, again.

“Yes,” Claire said but her gaze was still contemplative and Elena knew she saw through her façade. She smiled. “Aren’t you going to try on that last dress? The royal blue one?” she asked motioning with her chin toward it, diverting the topic smoothly and making Elena nearly sigh with relief. Elena liked Claire, she was a good person by all accounts other than her sharp temper but this bothered her. She knew Claire was a vampire but so was Stefan and if Damon could adapt and change so could she.

“Oh, yeah. Of course,” Elena said and slid off Stefan’s lap fetching the dress and taking it into the dressing room, happy for the moment’s respite from the ‘vampire high life.’

Damon took a seat again with a contented sigh. Claire dropped down into his lap and Damon waved her empty glass at one of the clerks who hastened to refill it, then he pressed it into her hand. She took it absently and cast a glance at the dressing room where Elena had gone.

Elena seemed greatly disturbed by Damon and Claire being what they were. She’d known they were going to do this. Claire didn’t want to make Elena uncomfortable and Claire certainly felt no guilt for behaving as exactly what she was, a vampire. But it bothered her that Elena seemed disturbed by it. Claire cared what Elena thought of her, because she’d accepted her knowing what she was.

Stefan looked mildly bothered as well. Was it the fight to resist giving in to his true nature to drink human blood? Or was he disturbed that Elena was disturbed? Was he afraid Elena would see the real Stefan under his ‘friendly neighborhood vampire’ façade?

What was so wrong with being what you were? Was Elena’s acceptance conditional on being like Stefan? Or was she really that naïve?

 “I don’t know about this,” Elena called from the dressing room doubtfully.

“It can’t be that bad,” Claire encouraged.

The man in the jersey still hovered, though he’d drawn a little closer but not too close, not enough that someone who wasn’t looking to be followed would notice. Though how many times he thought he could browse through the women’s sportswear section without being conspicuous was a mystery.

“It’s kind of revealing,” Elena called back. She seemed all right now. The hint of being bothered gone from her voice, only the doubtfulness of a woman who wasn’t sure the clothing she was trying on was ‘her’.

“Come on, Elena. Let us see,” Damon threw in his encouragement. Claire heard Elena sigh heavily.

“Alright,” she said and came out hesitantly. It took her a second to stand straight enough to see the dress completely so shy was she about it. Claire thought it was stunning on her. The royal blue stood out boldly from her tanned olive skin and set off the gold highlights in her brown hair, made her rich amber eyes almost glow. The fitted cut showed her figure and accentuated her tiny waist with the gathered front and the plunging V-neckline lent it just a little sexy appeal. Not too much, nothing risqué, just enough ‘umph’ that Elena didn’t look like a little girl in it.   

“It looks gorgeous on you Elena,” Claire said truthfully. Elena still looked doubtful and shy but she brightened a bit.

“I don’t know….,” Stefan said but his eyes were glued to his girlfriend. He didn’t know, huh? Then why couldn’t he take his eyes off her? Claire grinned to herself. Elena looked antsy again at his words.

“It looks wonderful,” Claire insisted to Elena. She looked to Damon to get his opinion.

“Don’t you think, Damon?” Damon didn’t answer her. He was as riveted on Elena as Stefan was.

Claire looked from him to Elena and then back. Claire knew the look on Damon’s face. She’d seen him turn it on her before. It was longing.  Was Damon attracted to Elena? Claire felt a sharp jab of jealousy and despair strike her heart. She’d been hoping with Katherine gone that she and Damon could make a real go of it this time. But if he was enamored of Elena… Claire had always been a dollar short and a day late, always second best when it came to Katherine. But Claire had understood because Damon had loved her first. Was she going to run second best to Elena now too?

But Damon had told her he’d never leave her again…that he’d made the wrong choice in choosing Katherine. Damon lied when it came to protecting those he loved. Claire knew that and accepted it. He’d swear until the cows came home that he wouldn’t interfere with Claire going after Alexander with them and then merrily snap her neck to keep her safe. Because he loved her.

Claire found no fault with that because she’d do the same. It was tremendously inconvenient but she understood it. No, Damon wouldn’t tell her those things and then have a thing for Elena. It was just surprise. He wasn’t used to seeing Elena in something so provocative. Or it was casual lust like with Violet in 1927. Claire didn’t care about lust. In fact, she found it highly amusing when the other person shared it and spent their time throwing themselves at Damon only for him to rebuff them. That had to be it.  Besides, Elena was with Stefan.  Claire had nothing to worry about.

So why was she feeling just a bit jealous and insecure?

 “Damon?” she asked again. He blinked.

 “Claire’s right. It’s lovely, Elena. It suits you,” he smiled at Elena but it betrayed nothing of what Claire swore she’d just seen in his eyes. Only a genuine honesty that the dress was pretty on her. A gentleman’s compliment.

“Really?” Elena asked still doubtful. She looked to Stefan for confirmation again.

“It’s not really…’Elena’,” Stefan said.

“Oh don’t pretend you don’t like on her, Stefan,” Claire cajoled, trying to tell herself Damon hadn’t looked at Elena like he had. That it was nothing. To play it off.

Stefan winced reluctantly.  “Okay,” he agreed looking at Elena as if he were chagrined to be admitting it. “It’s actually _really_ sexy.”

Elena turned pink with delight.

“Who cares if it’s ‘Elena’. Take risks. Be bold.” Claire held her champagne glass up as if she were proposing a toast.

“Here, here!” Damon agreed.

“Here, here,” Stefan agreed more enthusiastically.

Elena did a coy curtsey that was blatantly only for Stefan and they all drank.

“Don’t we still have to get jewelry and shoes to go with all this?” Damon asked.

“Yes, we do,” Elena said bouncing off the raised edge of the floor that led to the dressing rooms in much better spirits with such glowing praise of the dress and her in it. “Don’t we Claire?”

Stefan groaned. “When will it be over?” he bemoaned dramatically.

“Never argue with a woman on a mission to buy clothes,” Damon advised.

“Of course we do. What outfit would be complete without them?” Claire said in perfect imitation of the frivolous socialite she was supposed to be pretending to be. She smiled brilliantly but inside she felt the first pangs of insecurity, when she had very little security to spare at the moment, take hold.

 

***

 

Damon never wanted to move again. He had his head lolled back against the edge of his gigantic bathtub, the hot water leeching even the slightest desire to move from his limbs. Claire was opposite him, her legs twined with his in much the same pose submerged until only her head and neck showed above the thick froth of bubbles covering them both. Her hair hung in damp tendrils over the edge.

“God, I’ve missed this,” Damon murmured.

“Mmm,” Claire said. “Me too.”

This had been something of a past time back when, party all night and then laze it all away in the tub before falling into bed, sleeping optional. Damon liked his tub better than he had Claire’s, it was bigger. There was a long moment of companionable silence as they soaked.

After buying half the shoes in Charlottesville and enough jewelry to purchase a small house not to mention insisting on getting a cell phone to replace the one she had lost (the number of which they now all had), Claire had finally called it a night. Bags were now strewn all over Damon’s bedroom to the point you had to weave your way around them to get across it.

They had refrained from snacking on anyone else where Elena noticed for the rest of the night, which meant that their jersey-wearing follower was unlikely to have noticed either. It was minorly disappointing since the more they lived it up the worse it would piss off Alexander and faster

Despite having followed them all but to the front door, Alexander’s spy took a side road that broke off from Wickery Bridge and branched in half a dozen directions at the last minute. By now he was probably pouring a detailed account of the night’s happenings into a vexed Alexander’s ear. Damon wished he could see the look on that psychopath’s face when he heard. It would be priceless.

Now they waited. In the morning, scratch that, when he woke up later it was already morning, Damon would call Sheriff Forbes and see how far she’d gotten with the missing persons records. There was still the chance there had been another killing whilst they were out playing bait. Alexander’s last hurrah before he found out his plan wasn’t working out like he wanted.

Damon had, in spite of the charade, very much enjoyed himself. It had been too long since he’d come close to living it up on the town in any fashion. Between their Klaus problem, keeping Elena safe and his new found (or was that imposed) good behavior he’d been playing the friendly neighborhood vampire for months. It felt good to let go, even if it had been only a little.

“I think we disturbed Elena.”

“With the wanton partaking of other people’s blood?” Damon asked. He refused to move. He was going to lounge here and melt into a puddle.  Damon lazily waved a hand off the lip of the tub in a dismissive gesture. “She knew what was going to happen. It’s her own fault.”

“She didn’t approve at all. It bothered her.”

The water sloshed as Claire sat up some. Damon wanted to groan, if Claire sat up he was almost required to do the same.

“She’s very much a woman-child isn’t she?”

Damon chuckled and raised his head off the edge of the tub. “’Woman-child’? I don’t think I’ve heard that used in a century. Your age is showing, dear.”

“Ouch,” Claire said, but she was laughing with him. Her face grew serious, a thin line developing between her finely arched brows. “Is she really that naïve?”

Gah. Why serious? Damon didn’t want to be serious. He wanted to lay here, soak until his muscles were putty, then throw Claire into his bed and ignore the real world for a while. Reality sucked.

Damon sighed and pushed himself up so his back was flush to the tub. “Elena believes everyone should be Stefan.” He dropped his hand down beside the bathtub and picked up the glass of red wine waiting there. He took a drink from the glass.

“So she suggested,” Claire said. Damon held out the glass to her and Claire leaned forward, taking it. She drank before passing it back.

Damon let his head sag back again and groaned for real this time, wincing. “She got to you didn’t she? She gave you the ‘Be Stefan’ talk.”

He looked at Claire. She half tilted her head in confirmation. “I apologize,” Damon said. “Elena means well. She just….”

“Doesn’t get it?” Claire shook her head.

“She gets it in principle but not in practice.”

“Does she really believe Stefan is any different?”

Damon scoffed. “Stefan believes he’s different. He’s bent on spending his life pursuing one extreme or the other.”

“And when he goes from Bambi munching saint to serial killing monster? She’s very compassionate. It’ll crush her. What happens to Elena then?”

“You don’t want to see her hurt,” Damon realized. He wasn’t sure if that pleased him or made him wary. He knew why Claire felt protective of Elena but this seemed to go a little deeper. “You actually like her,” he said. He laughed sardonically.

 It wasn’t that he was surprised Claire had it in her to like Elena. Or that Elena was not a likeable person. It was that Claire had fallen into the same trap he had and liked Elena for Elena. She seemed to have that effect on people. Everyone loved her.  

“Elena Gilbert does it again, turning vampires into ‘people with fangs’ since 2009.” He passed the glass back to Claire. “Don’t feel bad she got to me too.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Trust me, I’ve tried disillusioning her but Stefan and his ‘moral high ground’ have her convinced otherwise.”

Claire frowned. “I can’t be what she wants me to be Damon.”

“Oh, I know!,” Damon agreed fervently.

Damon had missed this desperately too. Claire got it. All of it. Nobody else did. The dichotomy of embracing what you had become while on some level hating it with all you were. Vampires ate people. It was part of the natural food pyramid. What’s more, they liked it. Even self-denying, eternally guilty conscience specimens like his baby brother. They were designed that way. Damon sat up the rest of the way and slid toward Claire. He took the glass from her and put it on the floor before wrapping soapy arms around her.

He looked down at her, letting his hands glide unimpeded over her skin. “I have _missed_ you. You get it. You always got it.”

“You care about Elena a great deal don’t you?” Claire said her voice low. Damon caught the tone and swallowed hard.

Claire hadn’t been the only one to take his breath away tonight in that red dress that flowed over her body like it was meant to be shed at her feet, to be slid against a man’s skin and ignite it. So much like the dress he’d first seen her in at ‘The Red Ivy.’

Had she seen his moment of indiscretion when he’d seen Elena in her dress, the royal blue one that so reminded him of the moment they’d shared during the Mystic Falls Dance?  Did Claire know the truth? Damn it!

He had hoped she hadn’t seen. He didn’t want her to know about his feelings for Elena, who he could never have. He knew Claire knew that in the end she’d come second best to Katherine in 1927. She shouldn’t come second best to Elena now and he knew it but he didn’t know what to do Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. He didn’t deserve either of them. He was Katherine now. Damon hated himself. Well that wasn’t new, but he hated himself more.

“Well, yeah. Elena is a great girl,” Damon admitted playing it off. Claire’s face went carefully blank before he could finish. Damn it all to Hell. “She’s my friend. She might qualify as my only friend.”

Claire expression relaxed. Damon wanted to go limp in relief, saved by the literal truth. Elena was his friend and nothing more even if Damon felt otherwise. ‘You’re going to have to choose,’ his thrice-damned conscience remind him. ‘I can’t!’ he railed back at it, ‘I love them both!’ ‘You can never have Elena. She loves Stefan. It will always be Stefan,’ it retorted at him, ‘If you don’t choose you’ll lose them both. Claire is already yours.’ ‘No!’ Damon insisted. He was going to focus on one problem at a time. Get Alexander out of the way first then he’d figure out what to do about loving two women equally.

Damon pulled Claire closer, urging her with his hands to turn and lean against him. It took a moment of maneuvering and then he had her leaned back against his chest. He casually caressed her collarbone with his slick fingertips, tracing the line of it absently. Beneath the water, he felt her hand glide down his thigh in the same idle affectionate manner. Damon wanted to sit here like this and not think.

“Who is Klaus? Why does he want Elena?” Claire asked after a moment, shattering Damon’s hopes for a seriousness reprieve. He sighed. Why was Claire so painfully serious tonight?

“You know, I’m surprised you don’t know. What with Vincent and all the journals full of vampire biographies he collected.”

Claire stiffened against him at the mention of Vincent’s name. Damon moved his hands and started kneading her shoulders. She relaxed a little into his ministrations. Damon quirked a grin. He knew all the triggers to get Claire where he wanted her. She knew his too but it still arrogantly amused him.

“He was never very big on me reading them. He didn’t see why I, of all people, would be interested in them but he let me read a few.”

“Oh?”

“Yours, of course,” Claire said. Damon frowned. She’d read his? She knew everything that could possibly have been in it up to 1927 but had Vincent added to it in the following years? Had she known where he was and let him be because he’d chosen Katherine? Damon felt that wave of guilt wash over him again. He pummeled it viciously. He was on a fact-finding mission here. Focus. “Stefan’s, Alexander’s, Katherine’s but hers ended in 1864 and was spotty at best, so was Alexander’s.”

“I’m not surprised about Katherine’s. That woman has made an art out of running and hiding. You never read yours? Or Vincent’s?” Damon asked. He knew he’d have wanted to know what someone had written about him.

Claire shook her head, her wet hair tickling his chest. “Vincent didn’t keep one about me. Or himself. I guess if you’re living it you don’t need a journal.”

Damon frowned. Vincent Addison, who had been collecting vampire biographies through word of mouth, rumor, the occasional recollected account and personal knowledge for centuries hadn’t kept one on his beloved Claire? The woman he’d doted on so thoroughly because she reminded him of the daughter he’d lost before he’d been turned? He didn’t keep one on himself? That was suspicious. Was Vincent hiding something?

“And in all those, you never read a single thing about Klaus?”

“No, not a real one,” Claire said befuddled. Damon supposed that shouldn’t be a surprise. Claire hadn’t believed werewolves were real anymore than he had and surely there had been mention of them in those journals of Vincent’s. Had Vincent been keeping Claire deliberately in the dark? Now Damon’s interest was perked, darkly so. Something wasn’t right with that.

“The only Klaus I know of is a ghost. _The_ Original vampire. He’s like Adam and Eve to humans, a vampire bedtime story. People talk about him but no one has ever seen him.”

“Like werewolves aren’t real?” Damon shook his head then propped his chin on top of Claire’s head. “Alexander wanted to keep you in a gilded cage. Vincent kept you in a bower. I know you loved the man and he loved you but he didn’t do you any favors there, Claire.”

“What are you saying? That Vincent was hiding things from me on purpose? We didn’t keep secrets from each other,” Claire said. Damon held his hands up placating as Claire wrenched around in the tub to glare at him hotly. Damon knew that not to be wholly true. Vincent had kept the fact Damon had a daylight ring from her because he didn’t want her to know Damon had what she never could. Claire had figured it out on her own. Another one of those ‘legends’ she hadn’t thought were true.

“All I’m saying is maybe he didn’t tell you everything because he thought you’d be better off not knowing. He always protected you.” Some of the vehement anger in Claire’s eyes quelled. “Klaus is real. It’s not a story and it’s not The Original, it’s The Originals, plural.”

“There’s more than one?” Claire asked sounding more than a little disbelieving and petulantly derisive. Damon had just suggested Vincent had been lying to her for a century. She was irked at him for insulting her century-long companion.

“Klaus is just the oldest of them.”

Claire looked at him dubiously. He couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t believed it at first either. Original vampires. Curses that made vampires slaves to the sun and bound werewolves the cycle of the moon. Werewolves existing at all. Petrova doppelgangers needed to break said curse. It was all the stuff of fairy tales. But if there was one thing to make someone believe, it was hard proof and Damon happened to have it, stashed in the basement.

He urged Claire to let him up. “Come on, get dressed. I want to show you something.”

Claire gave him a long-suffering and still mildly angry look but she got out of the tub. At least she hadn’t tried to throw him out the window.

 

***

“There’s this curse,” Damon said as he led Claire through the house toward the basement. She was still damp from the bath in an ultra feminine satin and lace gold cream camisole and shorts set that was hidden beneath her light knee length matching terrycloth robe. Stefan was out hunting since he hadn’t be able to earlier and Elena was asleep. They wouldn’t be disturbed. “The Sun and Moon Curse. Apparently, eons ago the Aztecs got tired of being plagued by vampires and werewolves so they cursed them. Making us slaves to the sun and werewolves bound by the cycle of the moon. But, if you break the curse, whichever side does it is free of the curse and the other is screwed for all eternity.”

“So we’d be able to walk in the sun if a vampire broke it,” Claire said following in Damon’s wake.  He didn’t miss the painfully hopeful note in her voice. He needed to talk to Bonnie, he thought as he opened the door to the basement and waved Claire through and turned on the lights.

“Enter the mysterious Klaus. He’s the oldest of The Originals but not the only one. There are others. No one knows how many. It’s still all kind of shady. They’re his foot soldiers.”

“Klaus wants to break the curse,” Claire said. “What’s that got to do with Elena?”

“Yeah well, thing is in order to break the curse you have to have five things and it has to be done on a full moon. You need the moonstone that was used to bind the curse, a witch to do the spell, and three sacrifices. A vampire, a werewolf and the Petrova Doppelganger,” Damon said as they made their way down the stairs. 

“Come to find out Katherine was the first doppelganger. She’s been running from Klaus for five hundred years which is why she faked her death in 1864. She turned herself into a vampire to prevent Klaus sacrificing her and he’s been pissed about it ever since. The doppelganger has to be human for the spell to work. Elena, who is a dead ringer for and a direct descendant of Katherine, is the second doppelganger,” Damon said, he failed to see the flash of upset that appeared on Claire’s face at the acknowledgement that Elena looked exactly like Katherine.

“Apparently they only pop up in the Petrova line every five hundred years or so. No one had any idea Katherine had a child before she became a vampire. And that is another exceeding long story but to cut to the chase. That’s why Klaus wants Elena,” Damon said. The hope went right out of Claire’s eyes without any regret. It was filed in the ‘not an option’ category instantly. She wouldn’t hope for something that would get Elena killed.  How had Damon ever chosen Katherine over Claire?

“Now we have a witch, Bonnie. But our werewolf, Tyler, ran away from home because he couldn’t deal. We had the moonstone—until Katherine took it from us in an attempt to save her own sorry ass, then got screwed over by Elena’s birth mother Isobel. Who is also a vampire and promptly incinerated herself under Klaus’s compulsion after screwing over Katherine for him. Which probably means Katherine’s dead. Like I said, really long story.Aand yes Originals can compel other vampires for future reference. Yet we still have no idea where Klaus is or what he looks like. Dick’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.” 

“This guy—who works for Klaus but was going to double cross him and kill him _after_ the ritual and Elena’s sacrifice,” Damon said pulling open the door to the basement cell. “Is another one of The Originals.”  Claire stepped into the doorway to see what lay inside the cell and stood there gaping. Damon didn’t blame her. It was quite a sight, a vampire with a silver dagger plunged into his heart who looked very dead by vampire standards, skin gone gray and veiny.

“His name’s…” Damon began to offer.

“Elijah.”

Damon looked sharply at Claire. She was looking at Elijah’s body with an expression of stark surprise.

“You know him?” Damon asked.

“Not me. Vincent.”

“Well this oughta be good,” Damon said crossing his arms and looking at Claire expectantly. Her eyes were still glued on Elijah. He had thought something was funny with Vincent’s secrecy but this wasn’t what he was expecting.

“Elijah was a friend of his. More of an acquaintance really,” Claire said. She started to move toward Elijah’s body as if to touch it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Damon warned ready to stop her if need be. “That dagger in his chest is the only thing keeping him dead. So much as touch it and he’ll wake up. Only way to kill an Original. Can’t kill the bastards with sunlight, fire or a stake. Only those damn daggers dipped in white oak ash will do it and then only if you leave the thing in.”

Claire stepped back shaking her head, mystified and Damon knew without a doubt Claire had had no idea about any of this. Her eyes were so damn betrayed he started wondering if he should be worried she was going to bolt. Good thing it was daylight out.

 “He’d just show up on occasion. Vincent never seemed to trust him, he was always very evasive about what Elijah wanted. I never heard what they talked about, Vincent would always take them somewhere else to talk. Elijah was always a perfect gentleman, very charming, but he was never really interested in me so I thought nothing of it. I never knew he was anything but another vampire, one of Vincent’s stuffy friends.”

Vincent’s comment about ‘being retired from vampire politics’, his slew of journals, made perfect sense in hindsight. He’d been working for the damn Originals or Elijah had come to him knowing he kept them in the hopes of finding Katherine. That brought up a whole barrage of questions Damon would be very interested to know the answer to. Were Vincent’s supposed motives as innocent as they had seemed? Had Vincent really only been in Chicago to ‘mend Claire’s broken psyche’? Or had he been there looking for Damon or even Stefan in an attempt to find Katherine, Claire his unwitting pawn to get information out of Damon and he and Claire falling in love was just an unexpected consequence?

“He was looking for Katherine,” Damon said.  But Eljiah had had no idea Katherine hadn’t died in 1864 so either Claire had never told Vincent all Damon had told her…or Vincent hadn’t told Elijah. If Vincent had known, considering what Damon had done, he could think of no reason Vincent wouldn’t have told Elijah what he wanted to know.

“You never told Vincent about Katherine being in the tomb did you?”

“No. Why would I? It was hard enough to keep him from wanting to kill you after you left. Why would I tell him you did it because you chose Katherine over me? I’d never have been able to stop him. I never even told him about your ring. I promised I wouldn’t.”

Damon felt a wave of guilt and love wash over him. She’d kept his secrets even though he’d left her and broken her heart. She’d convinced Vincent not to come after him in a fit of anger over it and kept those secrets from the one person she had never kept anything from. And Vincent had betrayed her. If Damon was an idiot, Vincent was a moron. He had used her as surely as Alexander was obsessed with her. ‘ _I thought you two might be good for each other, two souls so alike and yet so utterly opposite. I never expected her to fall in love with you…or you with her.’_ Vincent had never meant for Claire to fall in love with him. Alexander had used fear and brute force to manipulate her. Vincent had used love and trust.

 “He already knew about the ring, Claire. He just didn’t want you to know because he didn’t want to hurt you,” Damon told her.

Claire looked at him stricken.

But that wasn’t true either was it? If Vincent knew Elijah, he certainly could have used that acquaintance to get a daylight ring even then, bargained information against it. Elijah had powerful knowledgeable witches on retainer all over the place. All The Originals did. Which meant the son of a bitch had _not_ done it on purpose. Damon couldn’t tell her that of course. He didn’t dare shatter her worldview anymore than it already had been at the moment. She already looked ready to flip out on him, again. Claire was perceptive, she was going to figure it out on her own. The light in her eyes changed. Shit, Damon thought.

“Vincent used me to get to you. He wanted to find out if Katherine was still alive. I was a pawn the whole time,” she breathed, hugging her arms.

“You didn’t know,” Damon soothed.

Claire scoffed and shook her head, he saw her muscles tense. Betrayal and broken trust mixed with stunned pain written in the lines of her face. Her eyes teared up, becoming glassy but they didn’t fall. Damon knew she wanted to kill something. That innate predatory instinct. The need to lash out. Only there was nothing to lash out at. Vincent was dead. Elijah was on the floor of the cell with a dagger in his heart and Damon was as much a victim of Vincent as she was. There was only one way for it all to go, back the way it came. Claire’s eyes went blank.

For an instant, Damon nearly panicked. “Claire?” he asked tentatively. He was mortally afraid she’d just flipped her switch. It happened that fast. One second you were overwhelmed by emotions so volatile you thought they’d eat you alive and then you decided to turn it all off and it just …stopped. The exact thing he’d been trying to prevent he might have accidently triggered.

She looked at him with those blank eyes. “Say something, anything,” Damon pleaded. Claire stood there like a statue. “Get pissed, hit something. Hell, hit me but don’t just stand there.”

“What do you want me to say, Damon? That I’m upset? That I’m hurt? I’m not upset. Upset is an emotion specific to those who care. Why should I care? What’s the point? It won’t change anything,” she said very flatly. The kind where you were making your voice flat on purpose because if you so much as raised your voice even a little, you were going to lose your mind.

“I think I liked it better when you went into a blind rage and killed people,” Damon said unnerved by how calmly she said that, knowing that it was a lie. There was a muffled creak and a thud as the front door opened and closed.

“Stefan’s home,” Claire noted blandly, and turned to go back upstairs. She was in shock. Damon closed the cell door leaving Elijah to his eternal, dead but not dead, rest and trotted after Claire unsure what to do.

They emerged upstairs to see Stefan hanging up his jacket, face flushed from racing through the woods in his pursuit of forest creatures to eat. He looked at them and his brows pulled together.

“What’s going on?” he asked. Damon cringed. He didn’t know how Claire was going to react. Damon looked at her but she appeared utterly calm. He almost wanted to yell at her to get angry and attack something it was so disquieting.

“Oh,” she said absently. “Nothing. Just had the primary foundations of my existence torn asunder. So, I’m going to go to bed.”

“Wait, I’ll come with you,” Damon insisted half-afraid to let her out of his sight. Claire stopped and looked at him.

“It’s fine. I know where it is,” She said dazedly and then she trekked up the stairs as if nothing had happened. Damon took a step forward as if to follow, almost calling her back, then stopped.

“Damn it,” Damon cursed. Stefan was looking from him to the stairs where Claire had gone in confusion.

“Did I miss something?”

Damon winced. “I may have inadvertently made the remains of the shaky ground Claire walks on go ‘kaboom’.”

Stefan gawked at him. “Because you didn’t think she was unstable enough already?”

“I should probably explain because things just got way more complicated.”

“More complicated? How could it possibly get more complicated?” Stefan said in exasperation.

“Katherine,” Damon said. Stefan rolled his eyes and sighed. If it went wrong or got more confusing than ever chances were Katherine was involved somehow.

 

***

Stefan snorted when Damon finished telling the latest revelation and the entire history, painfully personal as it was, that went with it.  He ran his hands through his hair. “After we take care of Alexander, I’d really like to find out what Vincent might have had in all those journals about Klaus. Anything we can learn might be helpful to stop him.”

“So would I,” Damon admitted. “But I wouldn’t ask Claire about doing that just now.”

Stefan shook his head and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. They were sitting in the living room next to the roaring fire. “I’m not. I’m surprised she hasn’t flipped out yet.”

“You and me both,” Damon admitted worriedly. “She’s never done this before.”

“She just found out the man who was like a father to her for a hundred years and was just murdered by the psychopath who turned her into a vampire against her will was using her. She’s in shock,” Stefan said.

“She’s in denial.” Damon furrowed his brow. “Any of this striking you as just a little too much of a coincidence? Alexander turns up after eighty years, in Mystic Falls, dumping Claire on our doorstep now? Amid all the other crap going on?”

Stefan tilted his head curiously. “You think Claire’s hiding something?”

Damon shook his head. “No. I think Claire’s an unfortunate pawn in one of Katherine’s convoluted games. I just don’t know what game she’s playing.”

“Not everything goes back to Katherine, Damon.” Stefan admonished. Damon scoffed at him.

“Of course it does. Even when it’s not Katherine, it’s Katherine. Think about it, Stefan. Alexander uses little compelled minions to do his dirty work. That screams Katherine’s influence. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before now.”

“Because Alexander is a stark raving mad lunatic?” Stefan suggested, obviously still unconvinced of Damon’s way of thinking. “Elijah went to Vincent trying to find Katherine, who then used Claire to try and get information out of you only she was too loyal to tell him any of it. If Vincent knew anything about Katherine why would he have needed to use Claire as a unwitting spy? That doesn’t make sense.”

“This is Katherine we’re talking about. Queen of the A through Z plan system. She always knows exactly what everyone else knows so she can control it before it happens to her own advantage. It would be just like her to use Vincent to cover her tracks, by sending him on a snipe hunt, without him ever knowing she was behind it. And if she was involved with all this in 1927 what are the chances she _wasn’t_ involved in Claire’s life before then? Katherine is tied up in this somehow. I just don’t know how...yet.”

“Another point, what if Vincent was using Claire to find information about Katherine from you…because Elijah threatened Claire if he didn’t get it? It would fit with the holes that don’t make sense and everything you’ve said about the man suggest he cared about Claire immensely other than ya know…using her as a pawn to gain information from you.”

“Doesn’t matter. Claire’s never going to forgive him for what he did. Or the blessed memory of him anyway.  There is something else though. Didn’t mean anything then but now, if Katherine’s involved it might. Back in 1927, when Alexander first attacked us in that alley, he said ‘She gave her to me. She’s mine.’ I thought it was just the ravings of a psychotic mind but now…what if Katherine sent Alexander after Claire?”

“You mean you think Katherine set him on her on purpose? That she wanted Claire turned? What for? Why wouldn’t she just do it herself like she did with Caroline?” Stefan said.

“Because she didn’t want anyone to know she was involved. I have no idea why she’d want Claire turned but there you have it. It’s a theory.”

Stefan started to open his mouth to disagree and then shut it again. “There are glaring inconsistencies and gaping holes but you’ve got a point. So what now?”

“Claire’s in denial. Hope she stays in denial. She has to keep it together because of Alexander. She won’t go off the deep end, not right now. We leave it alone. Deal with Alexander and then try to figure it out,” Damon said tiredly. This was beginning to tax his brain cells.

“Okay,” Stefan agreed. He paused a moment then said, “You think Claire is going to be alright?”

“No,” Damon admitted. “I think she’s a ticking time bomb and I just accidently lit the fuse.” Damon shook his head again. “Damn it.”

“You really love her don’t you?” Stefan asked.

Damon sighed. “Yeah. I do.”

 “Why did you ever leave her? From the way it sounds, she’d follow you into Hell if you asked her to. She tried to hand herself over just to save you from Alexander.”

“Because I’m an idiot and do stupid things, Stefan. Like choose the wrong girl.”

“Because you chose Katherine over her?”

“Exactly. Only to discover the one I chose never gave a damn. Hindsight is an even bigger bitch than Katherine.”

“Maybe you’ll get it right this time,” Stefan suggested with great weight. Damon cut a scathing glance at him for the hidden meaning behind that.

“Maybe,” Damon said and left it there.


	8. Chapter 8

Damon moved over to his personal liquor stash and poured himself a glass of water from a decanter as Claire plopped down on the bed. By the time he and Stefan had talked he’d found her ensconced in the bed, asleep. He’d let her be. Better unconscious and not brooding than awake brooding and potentially about to blow a fuse. She’d curled into him like a lost thing. Holding onto him like he was an anchor in a maelstrom even in sleep.

Now she was awake, sitting on the bed in her nightclothes and pretending to be fine. He knew she wasn’t but he wasn’t going to chance upsetting her by insisting they talk about the revelation from last night. He knew talking about it wouldn’t change it, it would only make it hurt more. Claire had enough hurt. Damon had been where she was, betrayed, backstabbed and rejected by anyone he’d ever cared about.

He picked up a vial of vervain and uncapped it. Claire watched him, her nostrils flaring at the scent and she watched him oddly. He put a single drop of the distilled vervain into his drink.

“Are you dosing yourself with vervain?” Claire asked disbelievingly.

“Yep,” Damon said taking a drink. He winced as the vervain set his mouth on fire and burnt all the way down. “You should too. Right now it would weaken you too much but once Alexander is dead, a little bit everyday will make you resistant to it. Won’t make you immune but it’ll make it a helluva lot harder for someone to vervain dinner again.”

Claire made a contemplative face and nodded. Damon looked at her. “What were _you_ doing with a compelled play thing anyway? That’s not really your style.” He’d been wondering that from the first day Claire had gotten here. That was the opposite of everything he knew about her. Claire didn’t bother with keeping a compelled windup toy because she saw no point. If it wasn’t real why make the effort?

“I needed a distraction. And his name is…was... Jensen.  Alexander must have certainly killed him,” she said. Her voice was slightly melancholy. Damon almost dropped his glass in surprise. She actually cared about ‘Jensen’ to some degree as Damon was fond of Andie, his own plaything and distraction from Elena. What really bothered Damon was that Claire had taken a page straight out of his playbook. Couldn’t find or couldn’t have what you needed in reality? Compel someone to fill the void. It was so him and so completely not Claire. He realized Claire’s slide hadn’t started with Alexander’s abduction and Vincent’s death. It had been slowly creeping along for eighty years…ever since he’d left. He’d been the trigger.

Claire didn’t sound like Damon, she’d become him.

That bothered him more than he could say. Why? Why did he care so much if Claire flipped the switch? That was one of the perks of being a vampire. You wanted to turn the pain off, you could just push the button and SNAP, it was gone.

Was he really afraid if she did she might turn out to be a Ripper like Stefan? Or because if she did she wouldn’t love him anymore? Why did he care if she turned into him? That should have made him happy. Not made him upset.

“Why did _you_ need a distraction?” Damon asked sitting down beside her. He had Andie Starr as a distraction to keep him from going after Elena. But he couldn’t tell Claire that. Then he’d have to explain why he needed a distraction, that would end badly and harshly reminded him he was the ‘Katherine’ in this equation. But it meant he knew the ‘why’. He just wanted to hear her say it. Claire had made herself a walking talking vampire-loving pseudo-boyfriend. One who wouldn’t judge her for what she was, would love her exactly like she wanted. Because she’d compelled him to. Only it wasn’t real and never would be. The down side to compulsion. You could make someone do anything you wanted but you couldn’t make it real. But you could pretend.

Claire hadn’t answered him yet.

“You know you don’t have to be embarrassed about it,” Damon encouraged. “I’ve certainly had my share of ‘distractions’ over the years.” Damn it. She was broken and wounded worse than he’d realized.

“Speaking of distractions, aren’t you supposed to be distracting me?” Claire asked neatly avoiding answering the question. “That was your whole purpose with the dancing the other night wasn’t it?”

“Not entirely,” Damon protested. Claire sighed.

“Stop talking and kiss me,” she said taking the glass from him and setting it on the bedside table. She pulled his head down and plied him with a fervent kiss. “Be my distraction,” she begged. Damon obliged.

 

 

***

 “Oh my God,” Elena said shaking her head. “That explains everything.”

She was held in the circle of Stefan’s arms, dressed in the chemise Claire had bought her the day before. They hadn’t gotten out of bed yet and Stefan had just told Elena everything he knew about Damon and Claire, including everything from last night and their speculations about Katherine’s involvement past and present, Elijah, Vincent’s journals and the possibility that they contained information about Klaus.

Stefan nodded. “Yep.”

“Explains perfectly why she hates me. To a dog whose been hit one too many times, every hand holds a stick. She’ll hate me until she gets to know me. But she apologized and I think she means it. I don’t think she knows what compassion feels like when it’s directed at her.”

“That’s so sad,” Elena said. “But back in the dining room before the sheriff got here, I thought she was going to break down on me. When I hugged her, it was like she didn’t know what to do for a second.”

“She probably didn’t. To her it was unexpected. She’s a vampire, you’re a human. To her, you should be running for the hills in fear just because she’s got fangs. She keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop or someone to kick her. When it doesn’t happen, she doesn’t know how to react. Forgiving her for attacking me confused the Hell out of her.”

“She asked me to forgive her for it too,” Elena said. By her expression, Stefan knew Elena couldn’t grasp why.

Stefan nodded. “You’re the owner of the house for one. Claire isn’t much younger than me and Damon. Different era. Proper manners require you apologize to the Master or Mistress of the house when you misstep.”

“Oh.”

“And,” Stefan was quick to add. “You’re human and showed her an ounce of compassion with no foreseeable gain when you could have theoretically left her on the doorstep to burn. Which to her is probably exactly what you should have done if you weren’t crazy. She’s so grateful for it she’s abasing herself to you. She had to apologize because she knew you were upset with her. It’s also why I don’t think Damon was exaggerating about Claire being willing to die to protect you now.”

 “I don’t understand that,” Elena said. “Why would she do that? She doesn’t even know me.”

“You’re a beautiful person, Elena. Inside and out.  You’re deeply compassionate. It won Damon over. You saw a person not a monster. You’re a light in the dark. She wants to protect that little point of light from any harm,” Stefan said smiling at her brightly, love in his eyes. Elena colored prettily. She was always self-conscious of compliments.

“But I could be a terrible person,” Elena reasoned.

“You could. And she’d still protect you because you didn’t try to kill her or run screaming on sight.”

“She said something before. It was like she was trying to warn me against you. As if she was afraid you’d hurt me,” Elena confessed. Stefan shrugged.

“She sees herself as a monster. We’re all monsters to her. Why should she see me any different? She probably was.”

“You don’t think she’d really…,” Elena asked in concern.

“I think if I ever hurt you. She’d kill me.”

“What?” Elena spat incredulous and horrified.

“It’s a strange sort of compliment. She thinks you’re worth protecting against anything that might harm you. I’m biased but I agree with her,” Stefan grinned at his own joke and Elena relaxed some. “I just happen to be one of the ‘mights’ since I’m a vampire. She’s even one of them in her eyes.”

Elena looked thoughtful a moment. “That makes what she said make a little more sense.”

“Claire’s a very broken person, Elena. She needs someone like you to reach out to her. She needs to know someone cares about her, that she can trust someone.” 

“But Damon cares about her. He loves her,” Elena said.

“And Claire loves him. She just found out she was used to hurt Damon. If she hates me for what I did to him…how do you think she feels knowing she was used unwittingly, by someone she trusted completely and loved like a father, to do the same thing?” Stefan said.

Elena shook her head. “She hates herself. She’s not a monster. She’s a good person if she’d only let herself see it,” she said.

“But she won’t,” Stefan said. “That’s why we have to show her.”

Elena nodded in agreement against him. “We will.” She sighed with sympathy.

“How does she even get up in the morning?”

“She’s repressing and desperate. That’s why the whole thing at the mall. She gave herself over to the blood,” Stefan explained.

“I can’t condone that Stefan. She was made a victim so she victimizes someone else?”

“She was feeding on them Elena. Not killing them. Damon just enjoyed it with her, they’re birds of a feather. They were both on really good behavior actually. They didn’t compel everyone to give them what they wanted for free. Claire paid for everything. And she only compelled the people she fed off of, some of which she purposely hid from you when she realized it was upsetting you. Everybody else she just charmed into compliance.”

“She didn’t compel them?” Elena asked in surprise.

“No. You couldn’t tell?” Stefan asked.

Elena shook her head. “The way they were catering to our every whim I thought surely she had to have.”

“Nope. She’s very good at that. Claire was an opera singer, back then it was this whole song and dance. You had to socialize, be charming and witty or you fell out of favor and someone else would get the part you wanted. Reminded me a lot of Katherine, actually. I think Damon underestimates her. He thinks she’s incapable of manipulation.”

“See. She is a good person but I can’t be okay with her compelling people to feed off of. It’s not fair,” Elena said.

“No, it’s not. I’m not saying it is. We can show her a better way. If Damon came around, she will,” Stefan agreed.

Elena nodded then she said. “Do you really think Damon is right? About Katherine being involved?”

Stefan knew that all the same things were going through Elena’s head as they were through his. Sympathy for Claire, horror that Katherine might be involved in this far more than they thought and the knowledge that Vincent’s journals might have information on the elusive Klaus in them. Information they could use.

“Maybe,” Stefan admitted.

“That just makes it worse,” Elena said.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Stefan agreed.

 

***

 

Claire was standing by one of the leaded glass windows in the living room, staring at a single beam of sunlight as it filtered between a narrow gap in the drapes. Tiny motes of dust floating like golden glitter in the light. It was late afternoon and Damon was upstairs getting dressed. He’d been painfully careful not to talk about anything that had happened last night. Obviously avoiding it on purpose. She could hear Stefan in the kitchen making coffee, Elena idly entertaining him with small talk. Neither of them had spoken to her. Elena hadn’t even come out of the kitchen and Stefan had glanced at her as if he expected her to rip someone’s head off any moment.

Claire didn’t know why. She hadn’t been this calm in weeks. Just devoid of anything resembling caring. She was numb to it. She hadn’t flipped her switch but she’d shut the door on what she felt about Vincent, refused to let it in or think about it because if she did she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to make it stop. The grief had been nearly too much, she couldn’t handle the fact she’d been grieving someone who’d used her as nothing but a pawn.

She’d never flipped the switch before, was this what it felt like? No, she still loved Damon as much as ever. Still ragingly hated Alexander. Flipping the switch turned it all off. She was just denying what she didn’t want to deal with. Everything she’d ever held onto with any certainty was slowly proving to be an illusion. The only thing she had left was Damon. He had no idea how much relief she’d felt when he’d said that he and Elena were just friends. But finding out that Elena was a dead ringer for Katherine gave her pause. She knew how much control Katherine had had over Damon. Was Elena her replacement? Claire couldn’t lose Damon too.

Claire held her hand out toward the beam of sunlight. Other than her humanity, it was what she missed the most about being human. She couldn’t even remember what it had felt like on her skin anymore. She wanted to touch it, just once and not feel it char the flesh on her bones.

She stretched her hand a bit further, trying to let some of its warmth seep into her from a safe distance. How close could she get without being burned? How close could she get to life? How far had she been cast into the shadows from the light? She reached a little further. Just a little warmth, that’s all she wanted.

Her fingertips passed through the sunbeam’s glow and started burning the instant it touched her. No comforting warmth, just searing pain as her skin sizzled and hissed. Claire gritted her teeth and held it there, not making a sound. Claire watched her hand burn with a detached sort of fascination. She let the pain of it wash over her, desperate to touch it despite the pain, like a lab rat starved of food and willing to risk the electric shock on the food bowl for just a morsel of sustenance.

“Claire, Stefan made coffee if you want some,” said Elena’s voice. Claire ignored it so focused was she on the sunlight.

“Oh my God,” Elena gasped and dashed forward grabbing Claire’s wrist and jerking her out of the sunlight. “What do you think you’re doing?” She turned Claire’s hand over in hers as if she were concerned she’d done permanent damage. It healed within moments.

“Why did you do that?” Elena demanded to know, still holding Claire’s hand in her own and looking at her as if she’d gone insane.

“I don’t remember what it feels like anymore,” Claire said.

“What? Trying to burn your hand off?” Elena spat.

“The sun. I haven’t felt the sun in over a hundred years.”

Elena’s face softened into a mask of deep sympathy. She turned Claire’s hand and held it like she were comforting someone who was grieving a great loss. “Stefan told me…well everything. I know you’re repressing,” she said. “You didn’t choose this. You were a victim. You’re a good person. Don’t let it destroy you. You’re better than this.”

“Don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t try to humanize me.  I can’t… If I let it in even a little…,” Claire broke off. “I’m not good, Elena. I’m a vampire.”

“Yes, you are,” Elena insisted suddenly very upset for some reason that Claire couldn’t understand.

“If I’m ‘good’, then why did what I did last night disturb you so much?”

Elena swallowed and looked apprehensive about answering. “Because you made them victims. You took their free will away and it’s not fair to do that to someone,” she said honestly.

Claire chortled softly and gave a bittersweet smile. “See? There’s no good in me, Elena. I’m a monster.”

“No. You’re not,” Elena insisted. Claire took her hand back and reached out, caressing Elena’s cheek like she would a child’s. Sadly pained for her, at how naïve she was to what they really were. Elena’s eyes went large with alarm.

“I wish that were true.”

“Elena,” Stefan called. He’d come into the room and was standing by the door holding two cups of coffee. “Why don’t you give me and Claire a minute?”

Elena gave Claire a concerned look and then nodded, walking back toward the kitchen. Claire looked at Stefan and sighed beleaguered.

“You’re not going to try some sort of intervention are you? Because I’m fine. I’m starting to like you. Don’t make me regret it.”

“Nope,” Stefan said. He walked over and handed her a cup. “If you say you’re fine. You’re fine.”

Claire took a drink of the coffee and eyed Stefan suspiciously. “Are you patronizing me?”

“Not at all. But if at any time you decide ‘you’re fine’ is complete crap, remember there are people who actually care what happens to you,” Stefan said. Claire gave him a weird look. He cared? He acted like he did. But so had Vincent. And he disapproved of her behavior. Elena acted like she did but wanted Claire to be ‘good’. There was always a caveat. The only one who cared without asking her to be ‘the better person’ was Damon.

Why then did it matter to her what Elena thought? Or what Stefan thought for that matter?

“I know that,” Claire said, simply. No point in pointing out the obvious.

Stefan nodded. “Good.” He looked Claire over for a moment as if seeing her for the first time. “Tell me something though, if you’re so fine why did you stand there with your hand in the sun knowing what it would do?”

“Because, I needed something to remind me exactly how far in the dark I will always be.”

Stefan looked down at his feet for a moment, brooding. “You and I, I don’t think we’re as different as you think.”

Claire snorted. “I don’t think it. I know it. You still think you can be saved. I know I’m damned.”

 She didn’t wait for Stefan to answer. She turned on her heel and walked away, taking her coffee with her.

Stefan called after her. “I know that Vincent betrayed you, used you. But it’s possible that Elijah gave him no choice. With Katherine involved it may have been a matter of  your survival for what Damon knew about Katherine.”

Claire stopped and looked back. “It doesn’t matter why he did it. He did it and he used me to do it. I can’t forgive that. I told you, I will always choose Damon.”

 

***

 

Damon pulled a shirt on over his head and listened to the conversation going on down stairs. He was beginning to think the Claire he’d known, the care-free, embrace what she was and just be vixen he’d fallen in love with was gone. She sounded jaded and torn now. She sounded like him. He loved her anyway, he’d have loved her no matter what she was but it scared him. How funny was that? Claire sounded like him, she’d become him, and it had him terrified. How did that happen?

For the first time since he’d known her Damon had no idea what she might do. Before she was predictably unpredictable. Now…he just didn’t know.

She was pulling away from her humanity as he drifted closer toward his. If she pulled away from it completely, she’d flip her switch and Damon knew no one would ever be able to get her to turn it back on. Claire’s humanity, that tiny vestige of what she was when she was human, was all that kept her going. From being a Ripper (or so he told himself). She’d never flipped the switch because if she did she’d lose the good with the bad and she had held on to that for all she was worth. Feeling was all that kept her ‘human’ so to speak.

Damon loved her. He could trust himself around her when he couldn’t around Elena. He could just be himself and she wouldn’t judge him. Claire got it. Hook line and sinker. Something he didn’t think Elena would ever  be able to do.  Elena wanted him to change and be ‘good’. He played at it because she asked him to. Because he cared what she thought. Claire he’d never had to do that with. What did that say? That Claire was the better option? That she was the one he should be with? The one he already knew was his? The one who understood him and accepted him?  Even though he loved Elena, who was never going to love him because she loved Stefan? Didn’t he deserve to be happy and didn’t Claire offer everything he’d ever wanted?

But he didn’t know if he was enough for Claire anymore. He didn’t deserve her, he knew that. How could he keep her hanging on to her humanity when he wasn’t even sure if he had a hold on his own? When he couldn’t decide what to do about loving two women…again? How was one vampire in the middle of an existential crisis supposed to help another one in the same position?

Damon looked at the cigar box on his dresser. Inside it were the few things he felt important enough to keep. Damon wasn’t all that sentimental about keepsakes. There were fine cigars in that box and rolls of money. But there was one thing from his past. The lapis lazuli ring he’d had made for Claire in 1927.

He hadn’t been able to do it before but now if he could convince Bonnie to cooperate—he’d beg if he had to—he could keep the promise he’d made eighty years ago. He could give her back the sun.

Everyone she’d ever trusted had betrayed her, used her, somebody needed to keep their word or she’d never trust anyone again and it was going to be him. He wouldn’t fail her a second time. He knew too damn well how she felt.

Damon went to the dresser and opened the lid of the cigar box. It took a moment of rummaging around but he found the little ring box stuffed in the corner. He took it out and opened it, gazing at the ring. It still shone like the day it was made the nightingale possessively hoarding it’s lapis orb. He pocketed the ring. He had to go see if Sheriff Forbes had come up with anything in the missing persons department or if anyone else had been killed. He would stop by Bonnie’s on the way.

But first he was going to berate Stefan and Elena for trying to ‘Lexi’ Claire. Pushing was not the way to go here. The fuse was already burning on the bomb that was Claire, that would only make it burn faster.

 

***

Damon trotted down the stairs, car keys in hand. Claire passed him without a word, he watched her as he descended the stairs and pitched his voice slightly. “I’ve got to go see Sheriff Forbes, see if she got anywhere with the missing persons reports.”

Claire didn’t turn but he knew she heard him. His brow furrowed a little in disappointment and worry when she didn’t stop to kiss him goodbye or see him off. Stefan was still where Claire had left him looking extra broody and Elena was hesitantly emerging from the kitchen to see if the coast was clear.

“I’ll be back in time for dinner,” Damon said for added effect. They were going to ‘dinner’ at ‘The Pavilion’ which was holding an open air, on the lawn, art exhibit/buffet in Charlottesville called ‘Art After Dark’, another charade to provoke Alexander’s anger. Doubtless, this time he would be following them outraged that they were ‘happy’ when he wanted them miserable, compelled minion might or might not be optional.  As soon as Claire was out of sight, Damon grabbed Stefan and Elena by an arm each.

“Damon!” Elena protested. He hauled them bodily out the front door all the way to his car.

He let them both go and leaned in the window, starting the engine so the rumble would cover their conversation.

“What the hell are you doing? I thought we agreed to leave it alone?” he demanded. “You can’t ‘Lexi’ Claire.”

Stefan glared at him. “Someone has to. The more disconnected she gets from her feelings the further she gets from her humanity.”

 “She’s having an existential crisis, Stefan. ‘Lexi-ing’ someone is reserved for when they have their switch off. She feels. That’s the problem. She feels too much and all she feels right now is pain. There’s only so much pain a person can take before they snap. Claire has a raging temper. You know this. And you’re going to provoke her?”

“She needs to know someone cares, Damon,” Elena insisted. Damon rolled his eyes. He was surrounded by idiots. Judgmental, hypocritical idiots at that.

“She knows. She doesn’t want you to care. Because it hurts. She doesn’t want to feel. It’s easier to be hated. If you keep pushing you’re going to make her go off or turn off. Need I remind you of a little incident not so very long ago? I kissed Elena. I thought she kissed me back. Doppelganger hi-jinks ensued. I broke Jeremy’s neck.”

“So just ignore it?” Elena spat incredulous.

“Stop poking the bear. The bear bites, Elena. And that one bites really hard,” Damon shot back. “You two have no sense of subtlety. You can’t make Claire ‘better’ by trying to shove it down her throat, you have to ease it in there.”

“So you don’t want to ignore it,” Stefan said.

“Of course not! What do you think I’ve been doing since she got here? But I, unlike you, know how to do it without sending her flying off the deep end. The idea is to keep her feeling things that make feeling worth it, not shove her into pain overload,” Damon said.

Stefan nodded knowingly smug. “This whole ‘vampire high life’ thing wasn’t just to provoke Alexander was it?”

Elena crossed her arms and shared a confirming glance with Stefan.

Damon sighed. “No. Not entirely. But so what if it wasn’t and keeping Claire feeling is the silver lining?”

“She needs something to hold on to. Something that makes her feel human,” Stefan said.

“Don’t you think I’ve already thought of that? I’m on it, Stefan,” Damon bit angrily. He looked between their displeased faces. He didn’t particularly care what they thought of it as long as they did it. “Now, I’m going to go see Sheriff Forbes. Pretend nothing is wrong. As long as you pretend, she can pretend and right now _that’s_ what she needs. Not an intervention. Stop judging, stop trying to save her. Stop trying to change her. Just stop. One crisis at a time, okay?”

Stefan and Elena stared back at him petulantly. Stefan relented first. “Fine.” Elena scoffed in disbelief. Stefan shook his head at her. Elena shrugged.

“Fine.”

“I mean it, Elena. If you keep prodding her, whatever happens, it’s on you,” Damon told her through the car window. He looked at Stefan. “Watch Claire. Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.” Stefan nodded. Damon started to put the car in gear. He paused. “And keep her away from the liquor cabinet. Vampire in existential crisis plus alcohol equals bad things. Trust me.”

“I thought you were all about the humanity switch. It hurts too much, feel too guilty, just turn it off. Why do you care so much if Claire flips her switch?” Stefan asked.

Damon didn’t answer.

 

***

 

Damon went to the Sheriff’s Office first, taking great care not to be followed by anyone human or vampire. Alexander was good, but Damon knew how to hide in plain sight if he wanted to, especially if he knew someone was likely to be following him in the first place.

He arrived at the stroke of five in the afternoon, bouncing up the steps of the old historic Second Empire style building as the attached clock tower tolled the hour. He pushed through the doors to weave past the flags bracketing them inside and through the thin throng of people. No one impeded him, they all knew him. He knocked on the Sheriff’s office door and waited.

“Come in,” she called, her voice strained. Damon eased the door open and the sheriff started talking before he could even say anything.

“Damon. Thank God. I was just about to call you,” Liz said. Her eyes were shadowed, heavy bags beneath them like she hadn’t slept and her normally perfectly pressed uniform was rumpled.

“Well, I’m here now,” Damon said. The sheriff waved him in adamantly, gesturing him to sit down. Damon shut the door and did as he was bid.

“Please tell me you have something,” Liz pleaded, her eyes desperate for him to give her some sort of encouragement that the vampire on the loose was going to be stopped. Somebody was dead. “I have got utter chaos going on around here. Another two victims,” she picked up two file folders off her desk and slapped them down again. “And a second missing person.” Damon fought not to groan. Two more dead, the body count was supposed to be going down not up.

They’d known this could happen, that there might be one more night of Alexander killing residents of Mystic Falls to expose Damon and the others before the vervain was widespread enough to stop him. But every murder was only going to serve to incite frenzy with the Council and the townspeople.

“You haven’t found any other people missing but Brad Cooper and this new one?” Damon asked. Could Alexander have really been that lax in his ‘recruitment drive’ this time around that he’d only garnered three minions since he’d been here? In Chicago he’d had at least seven people doing his dirty work. One could hope.

“Not yet. I haven’t had time,” Liz said, her hands waving about her head in frustration. “I swear I am working on it. I’ll have a list for you by tonight and drop it by your house.”

Damon nodded. “What have you got?”

The sheriff didn’t hesitate to push the file folders across her desk to him and Damon opened them, looking over the crime scene pictures. The first one was fairly straight forward, a redhead Soccer mom staring dead eyed at the sky on grass, her throat ripped out. Typical vampire attack. 

“Where’d you find her?”

“The Town Square.”

Damon looked at her sharply. “And no one noticed it happen?”

Liz shook her head. “We found her this morning but she was killed last night. Looks like the daytime one was just an error in time of death.” Damon nearly heaved a sigh of relief. Let them believe it was the coroner’s error. Ten points to him for planting the seed of the idea in the sheriff’s head to begin with. “She must have been out walking with her husband. He’s the second missing person. Jack Sheppard.” She motioned for him to flip further into the file.

Damon flipped the page and got a glimpse of the victim’s husband.

“So this is our lost guy?”

Jack Sheppard was in his late thirties with short shorn dark hair and a light scruff. The picture had him staring straight ahead like a deer in headlights. Classic DMV driver’s license photo blown up to an eight by ten.  From the description attached to the picture he’d been as burly as Brad Cooper.

“Yes. The wife is Kate. They don’t have any family in town so we had no one to interview. We ID’d the victim by her driver’s license and tried to contact the husband’s job but he never showed up. He works construction and hasn’t missed a day in four years. That’s how we know he’s missing.”

“The vampire must have gotten to them before the vervain got distributed widely enough. He got lucky,” Damon said.

“He?” Liz asked, immediately catching Damon’s reference to gender. It wasn’t a slip on his part. He had to give Liz something or she was going to have a heart attack worrying herself to death. And it was the perfect opportunity to play up Claire’s ‘help’ in the ‘investigation’. Damon told himself it wasn’t because he wanted Claire to stay in Mystic Falls when this was over and maybe build a life with him. Because he wanted to be happy with her. Not when he couldn’t even make up his mind about what to do about loving her and Elena in the first place. But it was there, niggling him.

“Yeah. I told you Claire would be an asset. We think we’ve connected the killings to a particular vampire. One who went on a killing spree in Chicago in 1927. These killings follow the same pattern,” Damon explained.

“Then how do you explain the last one?” Liz asked. Damon looked at her and she waved at the second file. Damon moved it to the top, flipped it open and blinked at the carnage. He didn’t have to feign the expression of disgust on his face.

“Are you sure this was a vampire attack?” he asked. But he knew it was. The body was rendered limb from limb, shredded until there wasn’t much left of the throat or the torso but the face was recognizable and so was the jersey. Their football-loving stalker from last night was very dead. Alexander must have been incredibly pissed when he’d told them what he’d seen and killed him.

“Well, unless we’ve got a wild animal stalking mid-town and a vampire on the loose I’d say it has to be. We found him before we found Kate Sheppard… in the middle of the road on Main Street,” Liz said, her eyes large with incredulous horror. “We know he wasn’t killed there. This was a body dump. This vampire wants us to know it’s here.”

Damon closed the folder and set the lot of them back on the desk. “That fits with Claire’s research. This guy likes to scare the crap out of a town and then while away his time picking them off one by one while the citizens freak out in terror.”  Deflect away from himself and the rest of the vampires of Mystic Falls, lay all the blame on Alexander without actually identifying him and, to Damon’s dark amusement, attribute Stefan’s old Ripper behavior to him. Damon Salvatore, master spin-doctor.

“Three murderers and two kidnappings in two days, Damon. This vampire has to be stopped,” Liz said desperately.  Damon nodded solemnly refraining from pointing out it was actually four murders and three kidnappings in two days.

“We think we might have a lead on him. I’ll let you know as soon as we confirm it,” he lied. “The vervain will keep him from killing anyone else. I’ll take care of this Liz. I swear.”

“You better do if fast, Damon. The rest of the Council is about ready to start wielding torches and pitch forks. The killings a year ago weren’t this bad. People are talking about a crazed serial killer in Mystic Falls. I can’t pass off this last one as an animal attack, no animal could do that. It’s all over the news. Of course, you and whoever you deem necessary are exempt but I’m going to instate a curfew until this is over. No one is to be out after dark.”

“It’s a good precaution, Liz. Hell, maybe he’ll even get bored with no one to kill and leave. Once we get him, blame it on a serial killer. At least that will give you a viable explanation. I’d encourage it in fact. Do you and your deputies have enough vervain to cover everyone?”

“I wish and yes we do. You might be right about the serial killer story. It’s better than ‘Vampire Terrorizes Mystic Falls. Film At Eleven.’”

“Good. Let me know if you need more,” Damon agreed and this time he wasn’t lying. “Get me those missing persons reports.” Damon stood up to leave. “When you drop them off we might not be home, if we’re out following this lead.” And now he had a perfectly reasonable excuse not to be at the Boarding House when she came by.

“I will and please Damon, find him fast,” Liz pleaded fervently. “And thank Ms. Dominic for her help. I really appreciate it.”

Damon nodded tightly with all the appropriate seriousness required. It was all bad news, but at least it was bad news he’d managed to make work to his advantage. Though he knew if they didn’t kill Alexander in a hurry, Liz’s concern about torches and pitch forks might become a reality. He didn’t think Elena was going to see it that way though. In fact, he had probably better call before they found out on the local news broadcast.

 

***

Damon dialed Stefan as soon as he was clear of the Sheriff’s Office, on his way to his car.

“Yeah,” Stefan said sounding guarded.

“You want the bad news or the really bad news?” Damon asked.

“I have a feeling we’ve already heard it,” Stefan said. In the background, Damon could hear the television.

_“In addition to Kate Sheppard, who was found torn apart in the town square by what authorities say was a wild animal, Robert Williams was found brutally murdered last night on Main Street, his body dismembered. Sheppard’s husband, Jack, is also missing. Authorities have refused comment on any connection between the two deaths but the citizens of Mystic Falls are frantic with worry. Could a serial killer be on the loose?”_

“Oh my God,” Damon heard Elena breath. “Stefan you said no one else would get killed. I thought this whole act was to stop Alexander from killing!”

Damon winced. She was mad. He’d known she would be, unable to accept that the game they were playing came with losses. They couldn’t stop Alexander they could only slow him down and divert him.

“I know, Elena. I know,” Stefan said trying to placate her while he talked to Damon.

“She’s upset,” Damon said with a sigh. He didn’t like upsetting her. But she didn’t understand how the game had to be played.

“Do you blame her?” Stefan asked rhetorically.

Damon looked skyward for a moment. No he didn’t ‘blame’ her but it was incredibly annoying much as he loved her. That little voice taunted him again. _‘Claire understands it. You wouldn’t have to play the placation game with her if the situation was reversed.’_

“The good news? Liz is instating a curfew. No one out after sundown.”

“Good. It will be dark in a few hours. We have to kill him tonight,” Stefan said resolutely.

“How? We haven’t even lured him out yet,” Damon said incredulous as he got into the car. He sat there with the door open, one foot still outside the car on the pavement. He understood Stefan’s concern though it went further than Damon’s. Alexander was going to expose all of them if they didn’t stop him and the armchair quarterback’s death came perilously close to pushing it over the limit even Damon was capable of covering up. Stefan, unlike Damon, would also be concerned about the rising death toll.

The deaths meant one thing. Alexander had gotten himself a new minion (which they knew he was collecting them) and had his last hurrah before discovering his plan wasn’t working, which they’d known he might do. And the dismembered spy meant they’d succeeded in royally pissing him off when he found out his plan had failed.

To Damon, it was going like clockwork but Stefan was being banally superior, acceding to Elena’s desire to spare all the human life they could. Damon knew to make an omelet you had to break a few eggs. Sometimes a truck load of them.

“I don’t know. But he has to be stopped. We can’t let him keep killing people,” Stefan insisted. Damon rolled his eyes.

“This means the plan is working perfectly, Stefan. He’s pissed. That’s what we wanted remember? So he’d come out of his hidey hole so we can stake the son of a bitch. All we have to do is stick to the plan. Tonight he’ll be following us…”

“And what? Watch? Get even more pissed? Kill someone else he’s taken in a fit of rage when he finds out you and Claire are still living it up and ignoring him? No, Damon. There has to be a better way.”

Damon snarled at the phone. “I’m going to talk to Bonnie.”

“Good. We may need her after all,” Stefan agreed thinking Damon was agreeing with him. Damon had intended to beg Bonnie for a daylight ring for Claire, he was just adding ‘help kill Alexander’ recruitment to what he already intended to do. He half was agreeing with Stefan, not because he cared if Alexander killed his minions, they were doomed anyway, or because Alexander had had his last hurrah before finding out his plan was going pear shaped but because Elena was upset and what she thought mattered. Because he wanted her to love him the way she loved Stefan and because he knew unless he was ‘human’ she never would. _‘Claire doesn’t care. She took you as you are. Loved you as you are,’_ the voice in his head reminded him. _‘You already have her love. She’s already yours. Keep what’s yours.’_

“How’s Claire handling it?” Damon asked worriedly.

“Calmly, surprisingly enough. Very focused,” Stefan admitted. Damon almost sighed with relief. He’d been afraid she’d react badly but she was still behaving appropriately. Behaving like the Claire he knew. She knew Alexander had taken the bait and it was only a matter of time before they had him. Unlike Stefan who was hell bent on collateral damage control.

“Good. Don’t antagonize her. I’ll be home soon,” Damon said and hung up. He shut the door and started the car. He took a moment to huff in frustration. Why did it always have to be so complicated? Especially when Stefan and Elena were involved?

 

***

Damon arrived at Bonnie’s by the most circuitous route known to mankind, most of it on foot so his car couldn’t be followed, doubling back through the woods and leaving a trail so confusing he wouldn’t even be able to follow himself if he’d tried. He had meant it when he’d said anyone involved was a target and Bonnie was no exception wielding the power of a hundred dead witches or not. Even magic couldn’t stop a bullet it didn’t see coming and Elena would never forgive him if Bonnie died because of his inability to cover his tracks. Besides with Klaus on the way, they couldn’t afford to lose Bonnie period. She was their only weapon against him.

He stood on the perimeter of the property building his resolve for a moment before he  made his way up the walk. He knew Bonnie would agree to any help she could provide stopping Alexander, especially if she had seen the news. He’d killed innocent people she wouldn’t stand for that. But getting her to make a daylight ring as a favor to Damon. That was another story entirely.

She hated him. It was him doing the asking and Claire was a vampire she’d never met. Her prejudice against their kind would be in full play and she might refuse him just because it was him. Of course, he could have had Stefan do it and she’d have consented without blinking but he couldn’t. He had to do this. He had to keep his promise.

Damon knocked on the door. It opened immediately as if Bonnie had known he was coming.

“What do you want?” she asked petulantly, her hip cocked out. Oh, goody things were off to a rollicking start. Damon took a deep breath and started to speak but she cut him off, her hand in the air. “No. Let me guess,” she said. “You’re here because you need help killing Alexander. I get the news.”

Damon started to speak again but Bonnie was on a roll. “This is your fault you know.”

Damon’s face screwed up in an expression of incredulity. “How is this my fault?” She always blamed him. It didn’t matter if he’d done it or not.

“It’s you this vampire wants to kill and yet…,” she waved in the direction of the living room which he could barely see through the front door, the corner of the television flickering with the evening news.

“That’s what I was _trying_ to prevent when I asked you to find him in the first place. Only you couldn’t ‘oh mighty wielder of a hundred dead witches’ and we haven’t yet because he’s a maniacal insane psychopath with an agenda.”

“Kind of like you?” Bonnie threw back. Damon’s jaw tightened. He should have known he couldn’t have a five minute civil conversation with the likes of Bonnie Bennett. Witches, judgy little things.  He stepped forward without thinking about it, his fingers itching to wrap around her neck and throttle the life out of her but his progress was halted like he’d hit a glass wall. He couldn’t cross the threshold because he hadn’t been invited in. Another one of Bonnie’s litany of ‘take that’s’. His brother had been invited in long ago.

Damon fought for control of his temper and made himself smile. “Let’s try this again shall we?”

Bonnie stopped him. “I’ll help you.”

“You will?” Damon asked suspiciously. He’d known she would help kill Alexander but she said it so abruptly it made Damon go on alert.

Bonnie shrugged. “He’s killing innocent people. He has to be stopped. But I can’t do anything until you find him.”

“We’re working on it,” Damon said.

“Work faster.” She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him accusingly. “What did you do that he wants to kill you and this other vampire, Claire anyway? You failed to mention that before. Kill his family? Turn him?” she said arrogantly.

“He turned Claire, not the other way around,” Damon snipped. She knew that already. She was needling him on purpose.

“So what did you do?” Bonnie pressed. She stood back and crossed her arms waiting. Damon glared at her and silently cursed whatever force of nature it was that prevented vampires from entering uninvited.

Damon grimaced. She wasn’t going to stop until she had an answer and she wasn’t going to be very amicable if he used his usual assortment of snarky answers. Damon shut his eyes for a moment and swallowed hard. He couldn’t believe he was going to admit this to Bonnie of all people.

“I fell in love with the wrong girl.”

“Katherine?” Bonnie asked automatically.

“Claire.”

“What?” Bonnie blinked at him from across the threshold, her eyebrows nearly lost in her hairline. Then her expression changed and it was right back to the defiant judgmental witch he knew. “So he’s on a killing spree because you took his girlfriend? That’s what this is about?” She shook her head in disgust. “I knew it.”

Damon snarled. “You don’t know anything.”

“Yes I do. You take what you want and don’t give a damn who gets hurt in the process. Because of it innocent people are dying. It’s what you always do,” Bonnie spat snidely.

It was all Damon could do not to hurl himself at the door fangs bared even though he knew he couldn’t get through it.  “I should have known this was pointless.” Damon spat. It was Chicago all over again he was going to fail before he’d even begun.

“I said I’d help you kill Alexander. You find him. I’ll take him down,” Bonnie sniffed.

“That’s not the only reason I came here,” Damon said.

“What else did you want?” Bonnie asked.

“Forget it,” Damon said turning to go, his face falling.

Bonnie’s brows drew together and she gave him a curious look. “What aren’t you telling me?” Damon ignored her. “Wait,” she said. She ran after him, catching his arm before he could get to the steps. She gasped. Damon started to jerk his arm away and stopped. Bonnie had a steel grip (for a human) on it and was frozen where she stood, her eyes wide. She grabbed his other arm and shut her eyes as if concentrating.

“Let go of me, Bonnie,” Damon growled sorely tempted to hurl her across the porch. But he couldn’t do that. She was Elena’s best friend. Their only witch and the only weapon they had against Klaus. But if she didn’t let him go right now he was going to show her again why she should be afraid of vampires and get off her high horse.

Bonnie’s eyes snapped open and she looked up at him her eyes large with surprise. “Oh my God.” Damon glared down at her waiting impatiently for her to let go. “You love her.”

Damon jerked free. “I told you that already.”

“You _really_ love her. You’d die for her. You almost did. Alexander he…,” Bonnie stopped talking over whelmed, pausing for breath. “It wasn’t you, it was him. Oh God. He’s a monster.”

“Got all that from your little witchy juju touchy vision thing, huh?” Damon snorted looking her up and down angrily.  She’d forced her way into his memories and pillaged them in the blink of an eye and he’d been helpless to stop her. And her saying it out loud struck something in Damon. He would die for her. Just like he’d die to protect Elena. He loved her that much. Damon closed his eyes a moment to fight back the welter of emotion that swelled in him.

“Yeah. And more,” Bonnie said. She laughed snidely.

“You think it’s funny?” Damon snapped dangerously.

“It’s poetic,” she said still chuckling. Bonnie’s eyes softened a little. “And sad.”

Damon looked away unable to hold Bonnie’s gaze.

“What did you want me to do?” she asked quietly.

Damon swallowed and reached in his pocket. He didn’t like being derided for loving or mocked because his situation was some comeuppance Bonnie thought he deserved but he’d do anything for Claire. He took out the ring box and handed it to her wordlessly. Bonnie gave him an odd look but took it, opening it. Her eyebrows went up again.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, touching the ring and tracing the nightingale’s wings. “This is custom made,” she noted with surprise. “You had this made for her didn’t you?”

Damon couldn’t look at her again.

 “You want me to make a daylight ring for Claire?” she asked.

“Alexander took the sun from her. I promised I’d give it back to her one day,” Damon said tightly, uncomfortable with how much Bonnie now knew…all the vulnerable spots that were ‘Claire’.

“How romantic,” Bonnie said and she didn’t say it mockingly, she said it was genuine astonishment. Damon didn’t know if he liked that better or worse than mocking him. She shook her head sorrowfully. “I don’t know, Damon.”

He swallowed his pride. “Claire’s not like me, Bonnie.” He snorted softly. “She’s Stefan with boobs,” he said unable to keep his sarcasm from bleeding through. That wasn’t strictly true but Claire was good. She was torn and broken right now but she was good.

“Now there’s an image I didn’t need,” Bonnie laughed. She grew solemn again. “I know you think that. But she’s still a vampire. She’s killed people. I can’t help her do that.”

“You did it for Caroline,” Damon bit.

“I know Caroline,” Bonnie snipped back.

“Please, Bonnie. I know you hate me. You have every right to. But I’m asking you...No, I’m begging you. Just once. Do this for me? As a favor?” Damon said resorting to begging.

Bonnie looked at him hard and shook her head, mystified. “You’ve never begged me for anything. Not even for Elena.”

Damon drew himself up taken aback by Bonnie’s words and a little angered by them. He’d never needed to beg her for anything for Elena. She offered it freely.

“I don’t…I’m sorry, Damon. I can’t,” Bonnie said holding the ring box back out to him.

“You mean you won’t.” Damon swallowed the swell of anger that rose in him. Keeping himself from baring fangs and blood filled eyes by force of will alone. Instead, he reached out and closed her hand over the ring box.

“Just sleep on it,” Damon pleaded. Bonnie looked hesitant but finally she sighed and nodded, though she looked as if she’d already made up her mind. But he’d gotten her to agree to think about it. That was a step in the right direction wasn’t it? Damon held onto that because if he didn’t he was going to kill something in a fit of impulsive inept anger. He couldn’t fail again.

Damon stepped down onto the stairs. Why was he so embarrassed? Why’d he feel so naked and vulnerable right now? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t told Stefan all Bonnie now knew.

“Does she know how much you love her?” Bonnie called after him.

“Why do you care?” Damon asked, irritated, turning back at the foot of the steps.

“I don’t know. I just think, if she’s all you think she is, maybe, she’d be good for you,” Bonnie said with a shrug. “Call me when you find Alexander.” She went back in the house, shutting the door behind her and leaving Damon standing there staring at it in complete confusion. Bonnie Bennett had just given him relationship advice and meant it. Hell must have frozen over.

 

***

 

Damon, a thousand thoughts on his mind about Alexander, Claire, Elena and what the hell to do about any of it, came home to chaos. He could hear it before he’d even gotten in the front door. The sound of crickets chirping in the approaching darkness were drowned out by the sounds of arguing.

“This whole charade was supposed to keep him from killing innocent people!” Elena yelled.

“We knew this might happen. The vervain hadn’t gotten distributed well enough yet. The sheriff has instated a curfew. He won’t be able to do it again. Nothing we can do will bring those people back,” came Stefan’s calm voice.

“Now he knows we’re ignoring him. He won’t be interested in killing random victims anymore,” said Claire’s amazingly level voice.

“And what about the people he’s taken? That guy, the one he left scattered all over Main Street, was compelled. He got so mad about you and Damon’s little show he killed him! What’s he going to do to anyone else he’s taken if you make him madder?” Elena cried outraged.

“What do you want us to do? Walk out the door, cry ‘Uncle’ and try to take him? Granted it’d get his attention. It’s what he wants. He’d also kill all of us,” said Claire her voice deepening.

“There has to be another way,” Elena insisted.

“There is no other way,” Claire retorted.

“She’s right, Elena. We can’t just pretend surrender. Alexander is insane not stupid. He won’t come alone,” Stefan reasoned.

“You’re agreeing with her?” Elena spat incredulous.

“I’m not ‘agreeing’ with her. I’m just..,” Stefan tried to say.

“This is not a game,” Elena said to Claire.

“No. It’s not,” Claire growled just as Damon walked in. Stefan looked at him and threw up his hands.

“You deal with them. I’m done.”

“She’s your girlfriend,” Damon remarked of Elena’s outraged tirade.

“ _She’s_ your girlfriend,” Stefan retorted waving a hand in Claire’s direction. She and Elena were faced off in the middle of the living room staring each other down. Damon loved a good girl fight but this wasn’t the girl fight he’d have had in mind if he’d considered it.

“I thought I said ‘don’t antagonize her’,” Damon muttered to Stefan.

“I didn’t. It started reasonably and then,” Stefan waved at the two women glaring at each other. One outraged and upset the other bordering on disbelieving anger. “That happened.”

“Did you talk to Bonnie?” Stefan asked in a whisper.

“The witch is on board,” Damon confirmed. Stefan nodded in relief. Having a witch to whammy Alexander would be a huge plus when they found him.

“Don’t you even care that innocent people are dying?” Elena snapped at Claire.

“People die, Elena. It’s tragic but it happens. Arguing about it won’t change it. What’s done is done,” Claire said her voice was tight and controlled, the statement was loaded for bear and Damon knew it was taking every ounce of will power Claire had not to do something drastic. If it had been anyone but Elena they’d be dead already. Frankly he was proud of her for it. He’d never known her to be able to control her temper this well in the past.

He could almost hear the entire book’s worth of words that went with what she’d said but left unspoken. People die. They betray you. They hurt you. They use you and you can’t undo it. You can’t even ask why. What was done, was done.

Stefan looked down and away. He heard it too in the tone of her voice.

Damon cleared his throat and walked over calmly. “Ladies,” he tried to intercede. He might as well not have been there.

 “You and Damon spend your time living it up, drowning your sorrows in other people’s blood, and innocents die. It’s not right and you know it.”

Damon cast Elena a perturbed look for that remark. It was calculated to gouge Claire and expose his ulterior motives.

Claire’s eyes darkened. “Are you implying that I’m letting people die on purpose?”

“No. No. No one’s implying that,” Damon soothed, hastening to stop what might blow up into something very ugly.

“That’s what’s happening!” Elena bit. “How can you just stand there and say it’s okay? How can you pretend it doesn’t matter?”

“Elena,” Damon said trying to get her attention gently.

“You mistake me for someone with remorse,” Claire snipped.

“Claire,” Damon tried.

“There’s you go again. Pretending not to feel. Pretending you don’t care,” Elena accused.

“That would be human of me wouldn’t it, Elena? And I’m not human,” Claire growled back.

The argument had just swung into major déjà vu territory. It was jarring to Damon to hear Claire say something so like what he himself had said. Hadn’t Damon had an argument almost exactly like this with Elena not that long ago? Claire really had become him. Elena had slapped him then and he’d reined in the desire to eat her in a fit of anger by a thread. He wasn’t sure Claire would be able to do the same, her impulsive temper was worse than his.

“We’re all on edge,” Damon hazarded. He looked at Claire. “You’ve suffered a great loss. You’re angry. You want Alexander dead. I get that. We all do.”  

He fought the temptation to point out to Elena that of Alexander’s kills only one had been because they were ‘living it up’ and succeeding in distracting him. The others had all been an attempt to out Damon, and thus all vampires to Mystic Falls, and would have happened regardless of anything they had done. That Alexander had used his rage fueled killing of his compelled spy to do double duty only proved he knew what he was doing and was incredibly dangerous. It wouldn’t help just now and he needed them to take it down a notch or two if they hoped to do more than argue the rest of the night. He looked at Elena.

“You’re upset. I know you don’t want innocent people to die. None of us do and they won’t if we can help it.” He placed a hand on each of their shoulders. “But we have to stick together on this. Okay? Trust each other.”

Stefan was staying heartily out of the whole thing an expression exasperation with all of it etched onto his face and drawing another frown line on an already crowded forehead, his arms crossed broodingly.

“I won’t let her need for revenge get other people killed,” Elena said.

Again Damon fought the desire to snap at Elena. Claire’s need for revenge aside, Alexander was trying to kill them _first_. He’d started this. Not to mention the fact that Alexander was going to kill whoever he wanted regardless of what they did.

“And I won’t let your naïve bleeding heart stand in my way,” Claire snarled. She was dangerously close to breaking and Damon knew it.

“You’re better than this, Claire,” Elena urged, her face softening. The look on Claire’s face when she said it was half hurt and half barely contained rage. She blew a breath out through her nose. So much for playing peacemaker, Damon thought. He never had been very good at it.

“Let’s just all calm down and discuss this like adults, okay?” Damon urged being very, very soothing and calming. Someone rang the doorbell. Elena and Claire backed off each other and contented themselves with giving one another angry sidelong looks. Saved by the bell.

Damon looked at his brother and motioned with his chin toward the door. Stefan glanced dubiously between Elena and Claire before going to answer the door.

“Oh good. You’re home,” Damon heard the sheriff say. He heard her enter without invitation and Stefan’s faintly amused, “Come on in.”

She stopped short when she walked into the living room, glancing between them, the tension in the air strong enough to feel it vibrate across your skin. “Bad time?”

“Minor disagreement,” Damon said waving it off.  She looked relieved and thrust a folder in Damon’s direction. Damon let it fall open in his hands. It was the missing persons reports.

“That was quick,” Damon said.

“I rushed them,” the sheriff said. “I’d stay but I have to get back out there. Make sure people are obeying the curfew.”

Damon nodded. “I understand. Be careful out there.”

“You too,” Liz said with a wan smile and then she was back out the door, her pace brisk and purposeful. She had townspeople to protect.

As soon as she was gone, Damon moved to one of the couches in the living room and the others followed. The argument at least paused for the moment in favor of finding out what the sheriff had discovered. Damon sat down and flopped the folder on the coffee table. Stefan took the opposite couch and Elena joined him. Claire, of course, sat down next to Damon. Both women were still shooting irritated glances at each other occasionally but they were holding their tongues…for now. Like Damon kept saying, strong willed, stubborn women were going to be the death of him one day. He just knew it.

Stefan gave him a knowing look across the table as Damon started to spread out the contents of the folder on the table. Both Elena and Claire tucked their hair behind their ears at the same time, mirror images of each other. Both Salvatores blinked at it. It was like looking in a strange mirror for half an instant and then looking back and realizing what you thought you’d seen wasn’t there. For an instant…they’d looked very much alike.

Stefan looked at Damon and Damon looked at Stefan, an unspoken question passing between them. _Did you see that?_ Both shook their heads as if to clear them. _Nope. Didn’t see anything._

Damon went back to rifling through the papers and photos in the folder. It was filled with missing persons reports, each paired with a photo blown up from the subject’s driver’s license or ID.

Everyone scooted closer together so they all had a good view of the materials. Damon flipped through all the reports quickly, just for a brief idea of what Alexander was up to. All the missing persons were men, all burly, large and none over forty.

“He’s building a posse,” Damon said with incredulous anger. Alexander had taken the largest, strongest men he could find. The best ‘muscle’ he could obtain aside from turning a string of victims into vampires. Humans with the most weight and physical strength.  They were still no match for a vampire but they would give them a moment’s pause.

“He’s not taking any chances this time,” Claire said.

“Wait, how do we even know Alexander took all these people?” Elena asked.

“When is it ever _not_ the bad guy when eight people go missing in this town?” Damon said. “Well seven now.” He tossed the picture of the football jersey wearing man off to the side. Apparently, he was named Mark Anderson. Didn’t matter now, he was dead. One less compelled minion to worry about. Elena gave him a disapproving look.

Stefan teased the reports from the pile and shuffled through them. “Today, yesterday, two days ago, four days, seven,” Stefan said as he looked them over his forehead furrowing deeper with each word. “These go back two weeks.”

Damon looked at Claire and Stefan significantly. “He’s been here for weeks and we didn’t know it.”

“Which means there’s no telling what he knows about us. He could have been spying on us with his evil little minions and we’d never have known,” Stefan snorted. “He didn’t start killing until _after_ he’d left Claire on the doorstep. He just took people. He didn’t want us to know he was here yet.” Stefan cast the stack of reports back onto the table with an irritated flick of his wrist.

“Bastard’s gotten smarter,” Damon snarled.

“What’s that mean?” Elena asked shaking her head.

“It means Alexander is playing hard ball,” Claire said.

Damon cocked his head to the side looking at Claire thoughtfully. “It takes weeks to desiccate a vampire and you coulda doubled for Boris Karloff in ‘The Mummy’. That means where ever he had you held while he poked you full of shish kabob skewers is in Mystic Falls.”

“Claire, do you remember anything about where he kept you?” Stefan asked gently. Damon noticed he was very careful to avoid mentioning Vincent. Where ever Claire had been held was also where Vincent had died. It wouldn’t do to pick at that wound even by accident.

Claire’s brows pinched together and her eyes got a faraway look to them as she tried to remember.

“Not much. I remember being vervained. I collapsed and then Alexander was there. Next thing I know I wake up too weak to move in what I think was a car trunk, an IV of vervain stuck in my arm to keep me down and starving because he’d drained me,” she said in a distant voice, as if she were ticking through the events in vague recollection.  She too, carefully avoided mentioning Vincent. It was like she was pretending he’d never existed.

Damon grimaced, he hadn’t actually thought his idle comment about Alexander replacing Claire’s blood with vervain was a possibility but apparently that’s exactly what he’d done. He’d wanted her and Vincent completely subdued for the road trip to Mystic Falls.

 “Things were kind of touch and go. Then I remember… a house? Plank flooring, white walls, paint peeling. Really old. Late 1800’s by the look of it,” Claire said. “The one thing that I remember the most was the dual fireplaces. There was one on either end of the room. And it was just one huge room but I know it was on an upper floor because I could see the stairs.”

“Do you remember anything else?” Stefan prodded but his voice was quiet. He didn’t want to upset her by making her think about being tortured. Damon had news for him; the only thing the torture to herself had done was piss Claire off. It was what had been done to Vincent that had hurt her. Claire went right past hurt to ticked unless she actually cared about you. Like Damon had told him, Claire was a kiss you or kill you kind of girl.

“Other than being tortured, not really. Ya kind of lose focus when you’re starving, full of vervain and someone keeps driving stakes into you,” Claire said matter of fact.

Damon snorted in unspoken agreement. He’d been on the receiving end of a few torture sessions in his day. He’d also delivered a few but he digressed. Something about the dual fireplaces tickled a memory in Damon’s brain that he couldn’t quite reach for some reason. He dropped the sheaf of pictures on top of the reports and one slid further than the others. Elena frowned at it, picking it up.

“I know him.”

“Brad Cooper? We already know that,” Stefan said.

“No. Him,” Elena said turning the picture around to display it. It showed a man in his mid thirties with a shock of red hair that gave new meaning to the words ‘flaming red head’. “That’s Jacob Miller.”

“Miller, as in the Founding Family?” Damon asked taking the picture from her. Elena nodded.

 “I knew his ancestors. Charles and Margaret Miller were at the 1864 Founder’s Ball. I used to drink with their son Charlie down at the tavern. Remember?” Damon looked at Stefan. “Guy was a hoot. Get three or four drinks in him and he’d start singing ‘To Arms In Dixie’ at the top of his lungs, really badly. You could hear him all the way to Wickery Bridge.”

Stefan perked up. “And I used to play with him when we were kids. We’d sneak away to play hide and seek at the Meeting House and you’d get annoyed because Father told you not to let me and Charlie wander off.”

“You mean the Old Miller Meeting House out on the edge of town?” Elena asked.

“Yep,” Stefan said a dark grin spreading over his face.

Damon snapped his fingers. “And the Meeting House had dual fireplaces on the first and second floor but nothing else. It’s just two huge rooms.” He looked at Elena. “Does Jacob still own it?”

Elena nodded. “Yeah. His father left everything to Jacob when he died but Jacob never did anything with it. Wouldn’t even let the historical society restore the Meeting House. Mrs. Lockwood had a fit.”

 “We got him,” Damon said with a wicked grin.

“You still have Alaric’s vampire hunting gear in the trunk of your car?” Stefan asked. That they were going to go after Alexander now, while they still had the advantage went unsaid.

“Yep,” Damon said, rising to his feet. “Let’s go hunting.” He offered Claire his hand as if he were about to escort her to a ball. She took it with a devilish gleam in her eye. Now Claire’s focus was on nothing but the hunt and the kill. Pain and grief forgotten in the rush of impending revenge.  

“You’re friends with a vampire hunter?” she asked. Damon twined his fingers through hers and held it close to his heart.

“It’s a really long story,” Damon said.

“It always is.”

“How do we ‘have him’?” Elena asked standing up. “You’re going now?”

“This is our chance, Elena,” Damon said. “Alexander is six hundred and forty years old. He’s faster and stronger. Even with all three of us we might not be able to take him in a fair fight. That’s why it’s all about the element of surprise.”

Damon primly avoided mentioning that it wasn’t going to be three of them it was going to be two because as soon as they walked out of the room and he went to check the weapons in the trunk Damon was going to vervain Claire and stash her until he and Stefan killed Alexander. Promise or not, he couldn’t lose her, he wouldn’t. She could hate him for it but she’d still be alive. Elena wasn’t going period. For the same reason. He reminded himself that he didn’t mind being the bad guy but his conscience whispered, _‘But you can’t stand the thought that Claire might hate you forever.’_

“I thought you were all about killing him tonight?” Claire asked Elena voice dropping a note or two.

“But you have to be invited in and he has Jacob Miller under compulsion,” Elena said.

Damon shrugged. “So we’ll kill him.” He looked at Stefan. “I’ll call the witch.”

“What? No. You can’t just kill him. He’s a human being, Damon,” Elena protested. “What has Bonnie got to do with any of this?”

“Well Alexander’s certainly not going to let him invite us in. He’ll have compelled him not to let anyone in without his permission. So unless there’s someone else with rights to the house…” Claire said resolutely.

 “Bonnie has agreed to help us kill Alexander,” Stefan explained.

Voices were starting to trounce one another as they each stepped on each other’s words.

 “No. No absolutely not. You said no one else was going to be involved. No one else gets put in danger,” Elena said fervently.

Damon looked at her incredulous. “You’re the one who suggested it in the first place. Before I said no one else gets involved.”

“That was before I knew Alexander was a raving maniac. Bonnie is not getting involved in this.”

“What good is having a witch on speed dial if we can’t use her when we need her?” Damon spat.

“Elena, we need her,” Stefan reasoned. “Alexander may have a witch on his side. We know that.” He was the only one whose voice wasn’t getting steadily more heated. Somehow he was managing to keep his cool when everyone else kept getting more agitated.

“Did you forget the part where he wants to kill me and Damon? Or the fact he has killed four people and kidnapped eight others? That he’s not going to stop killing until he dies or we do?” Claire said looking at Elena in disbelief.

“No,” Elena said fiercely. “Which is why I’m not letting Bonnie put herself in danger. There are enough lives at stake as it is,” Elena insisted. “You all want to go and kill Jacob Miller so you can get in. You want to put Bonnie in danger. What happens to all the people he’s compelled when you get in there?”

“We kill them,” Claire said simply.

“No. There has to be another way,” Elena said shaking her head so hard her long dark hair snapped around her like a whip.

“We had another way. Only you don’t approve of it. We lure him out and take him on our terms, alone. With a witch who can stomp him like a soda can. But you keep tying our hands, Elena,” Damon retorted. “You want him dead tonight? This is how.”

“Elena’s right. We can’t just kill everyone he’s taken,” Stefan said.

Claire’s eyes flashed and Damon nearly dropped the phone in his haste to tighten his grip on her hand before she did something she’d regret later. Her tongue was more than sharp enough however. “They’re dead anyway.”

“No, they aren’t. He has them compelled if we can save them…,” Elena argued.

“Yes, he has them compelled.” Claire snapped. “He compelled half the Chicago opera to spy on us in 1927. People we knew. Well. Want to know what else? He had them compelled to try to kill us and never stop until they succeeded. We had no choice but to kill them all. It won’t be any different now. He planned it this way. And there is no ‘we’. You aren’t going.”

There was a shadow of the remorse Claire claimed she didn’t have in her eyes. She hadn’t liked killing those people in Chicago but it had to be done.

“We have to try. You can’t just kill them, it’s not fair,” Elena insisted. “I am going. No one else I care about is dying. No one.” Her voice was fervent and resolute. Damon felt a little thrill of heartwarming spread through him. Elena was worried they’d all die. Him included.

Claire blinked, her face pained for a moment then it was gone. She’d picked up on Elena’s connotation as well and didn’t know what to do with it.

Stefan’s face fell at Claire’s revelation. It didn’t have to be explained to him. You can’t undo a previous compulsion. You can try to go around it…if you have time and if you can find a loop hole. But compelling his minions to try to kill them and never stop wasn’t something they could out fox. But Damon knew his brother. Saint that he thought he was, he’d try anyway.

“Then we’re right back where we started,” Damon said his own temper beginning to fray. He glared at Elena. She was not going. “We lure him out and kill him on our terms. And you _are not_ going.”

“It’s not safe for you either Elena,” Stefan insisted.

“No. You can’t run around taking advantage of people just because it suits you. It’s not fair. We lure him out some other way. And I’m going. You promised we’d do things my way, Damon.”

Damon’s nostrils flared and his eyes flashed with anger. He took a step toward her, his hand still in Claire’s. “That was about Klaus. Alexander is not Klaus.  You are not going. I’ll chain you up myself if I have to. First you try to sacrifice yourself to Klaus now you want to risk your life with Alexander? I won’t allow it. What do you want us to do Elena? Hand ourselves over? That’s the only option you’ve left us.”

 “It’s her choice,” Stefan insisted.

“She wants to do what?” Claire said in disbelief. “It’s ‘her choice’?” It was the only thing she’d said in several moments and it came out low, slow, like the warning growl of a big cat.

“No. She doesn’t want Bonnie involved. Fine. She stays with Bonnie. We kill Alexander. Problem solved,” Damon snapped. He’d let go of Claire’s hand to stand toe to toe with Elena and glare down at her, his jaw clenched and tight. Claire glanced between them with a deeply pensive expression on her face Damon missed, he was trying to prevent both women he loved from going into the fray.

“No,” Elena said firmly.

“Yes.” Damon snapped back, He advanced on Elena until he forced her to take a step backward. She gave ground but she wasn’t swayed.

“Back off, Damon,” Stefan warned.

Damon snarled at him. “Fine.”

“I won’t let you hurt anyone else to stop Alexander. That makes you no better than he is,” Elena bit sharply.

“So you’re just going to let her make the decisions?” Claire asked, very evenly. Too evenly.

“Elena has the right to choose what she does and we can’t just kill all the people Alexander has compelled. They’re human beings used against their will,” Stefan said. He didn’t see what Damon saw. Claire’s posture had changed dramatically. Her spine was stiff and she had that steely eyed look about her. Elena had poked her with a hot iron by comparing her to Alexander who she despised.

“Claire,” Damon soothed, one hand reaching toward her.

“Who’s going to save her life while she makes the decisions? “ Claire said looking between them. “She’s going to get us all killed.” She looked at Elena and shook her head. “Did you think this would be a bloodless war? Are you really that naïve?”

“No one else dies,” Elena said firmly.

“I’m tired of this,” Claire said and moved so fast and with such abruptness none of them were ready for it. Everything happened at once. She flash stepped to Elena and grabbed her by the shoulders in the same movement. She pushed her back across the room and against the wall, capturing Elena’s gaze with her own. Elena hit at her uselessly.

“Let go of me!”

 “Claire, stop!” Stefan yelled and moved. Damon was right behind him. Claire had finally been pushed to breaking. Damon had warned them if they kept pushing she was going to snap. Stefan saw it as an attack, Damon knew better.

Claire ignored them all and kept her eyes locked on Elena’s. “You are not going. You are going to stay safe. You are not going to offer yourself to Klaus or anyone else ever again. Do you understand me?” She was trying to compel her.

“You can’t compel me,” Elena spat. Claire’s eyes flared with hot anger, her eyes flicking down to the necklace around Elena’s neck. The one she never took off that Stefan had given her.

“You’re wearing vervain,” Claire hissed. She reached for it, intending to rip it off her throat and compel her anyway, burn from the pendant be damned, when Stefan got there. He grabbed Claire by the shoulder and flung her across the room. She slammed into the opposite wall and slid down it.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Stefan growled at her, he gathered Elena to him. Claire stood up rapidly.

“I said I’d protect her. That’s means from herself too,” Claire snarled but she made no attempt to attack Stefan. She’d promised she wouldn’t.

“You can’t take her free will away,” Stefan barked. He looked at Elena, stroking her hair. “You okay?”

Elena nodded. “I’m fine.” But she was shaken.

“She’s your girlfriend. You claim to love her. But you won’t even do what’s necessary to protect her,” Claire growled. She was standing stock still, muscles coiled.

Damon moved toward her slowly hoping her attention on Stefan was enough to keep her distracted, if he moved too quickly she’d just evade him.

“I’d do anything to protect Elena,” Stefan spat shaking his head. “But not this. It’s wrong. It’s her choice, her life.”

“It’s okay, Stefan,” Elena urged understandingly, trying to calm the situation. Damon was still easing his way to Claire. Elena looked at Claire. “You’re better than this,” she pleaded.

“No. I’m not,” Claire said and moved, still intent on doing what she said. Damon intercepted her and she dodged at the last second, switching places with him, then sprinted for Elena. She was going to compel Elena no matter what anyone said and frankly Damon didn’t disagree with her intention but Stefan would never understand, neither would Elena. Damon and Claire didn’t mind making the hard decisions while everyone else was worried about collateral damage.

Damon put on an extra burst of speed and outpaced her, seizing her. She growled dangerously and Damon tightened his grip. “Stop. They don’t understand. Stop,” he urged.

Claire glared up at him furious, she snarled but she subsided. She jerked free of him, her hair in a tumble around her face like a wild thing. She looked at all three of them in turn, none of the fury ebbing from her face.

“You can all go to hell,” she spat and walked out, going up the stairs.

Damon sighed heavily and then cut a glare at Stefan.

“She’s completely off the rails,” Stefan said.

“I told you if you kept pushing she’d snap,” Damon growled. “Happy now?”

“She attacked, Elena,” Stefan said firmly.

Damon scoffed. “She didn’t attack her. She tried to compel her. She was trying to protect her.”

“By taking her free will away!” Stefan said outraged.

“Oh admit it Stefan. You wish you had the guts to do it yourself,” Damon retorted angrily.

“I’m not a robot you can give commands to,” Elena said incredulous. “She can’t do that.”

“I notice you didn’t seem to think that when you asked me to compel Jeremy to forget what happened with Vicki,” Damon snapped at her. Elena had begged Damon to compel her little brother to forget his girlfriend who Damon had turned into a vampire (in retaliation for Stefan taking his daylight ring, vervaining him and leaving him starving in the basement for three days but again, he digressed) when she tried to kill both him and Elena. Stefan had had to kill her to stop her. Elena hadn’t thought he could handle the grief and Damon had done as she asked, compelling him to forget and took his pain away.

“I was protecting my brother!” Elena said.

“And Claire was trying to protect you,” Damon snapped. “You said she was no better than Alexander. You tried to stand in the way of her killing the crazy bastard when she hates him more than anyone else on the planet. He took everything from her. What did you expect her to do, Elena? Smile sweetly and just do what you want? You need to stop expecting people to play the good guy just because it’s you who’s asking. Don’t be a hypocrite. I told you she’d die for you.  Is that what you want?”

“No!” Elena said.

“That’s what you’re going to get. We can’t save everybody. We try and we all die,” Damon said.

“There has to be a way,” Elena said.

Damon snorted in agitation and thought hard. He wanted to give Elena what she wanted. He wanted Claire to have what she wanted. He wanted both of them safe. It was a no win situation. If Elena insisted upon going and Stefan agreed to it, Damon couldn’t stop her without having to fight Stefan. But at the same time if Elena went Damon couldn’t put Claire down for the count either because they’d need all the help they could get to keep Elena protected. He was going to have to make a choice. Damon swallowed hard and made it. Claire was a vampire. She had the best hope of surviving this alive. Elena was nothing but cannon fodder.  She was forcing his hand, he had no choice but to let Claire go because Elena wasn’t going to stay out of it. But…he could temper it…

“There is another way. But you aren’t going to like it,” Damon said.

“If it involves other people getting hurt…,” Elena began.  Damon raised a finger and tutted at her.

“I don’t want to hear it. You want the compelled minions saved. Fine. You want Alexander dead tonight. Okay. You want to come. So be it. I don’t want you in danger, Claire doesn’t either. But hey, what we think obviously doesn’t matter. But we do this my way,” Damon said tensely.

“And what way is that?” Stefan asked arrogantly as if he were going to nay say the whole thing before he knew what it was simply because he knew it wouldn’t be the perfect game plan. Because everybody didn’t win.

“Same thing we were going to do. We go out, he’ll follow. He’s already pissed we’re ignoring him. Only we do it all out, no holds barred, whole hog, double or nothing. It’s not going to be pretty but it’ll work. He’ll snap and come after us on the spot. Just like he did in Chicago.  Then we _might_ have a chance of killing him without collateral damage.”

Elena started to protest. Damon cut her off vehemently. “Not another word. You’ve said enough.”

Elena said it anyway. “So your solution is to still use people? To compel them and feed off them?”

Damon snarled and took a deep breath. His patience was wearing exceedingly thin. “And none of them die. We’re playing by Alexander’s rules, Elena. We snatch, eat and erase. He kills. Don’t like it, stay home. You want to save everybody or not?”

Elena snapped her mouth shut and blinked.

Damon looked at Stefan. “You know I’m right.”

“It’s not right, Damon,” she said in a small voice but she sounded taken aback now.

Stefan looked away, he couldn’t meet Damon’s gaze.

“Your silence is deafening, Stefan,” Damon bit.  Damon looked back at Elena.

“Put on your party dress, Elena.” He turned from them. “I’m going to see if I can negotiate peace with Claire.”


	9. Chapter 9

Stefan and Elena watched Damon trek up the stairs, his shoulder riding high with tension.

“What is wrong with them?” Elena asked dumbfound by the entire exchange and angry that they acted as if they had so little regard for human life. “How could she do that?”

“Damon loves her and she’s spiraling. He’s afraid he’ll lose her and you,” Stefan said as Elena wrapped her arms more tightly around him. “And Claire’s desperate. Desperate people do desperate things. She knows it was wrong.”

“Then why’d she do it?” Elena asked obviously upset.

“Would you laugh if I said I think she was trying to protect a paragon of virtue?” Stefan said with a tired chortle.

“What?” Elena asked.

“I think that’s how Claire sees you,” Stefan said. He sighed. “She did it because she was trying to protect you the only way she knew how. Because she loves Damon. Because she loves Vincent even though he betrayed her and despite all her denial. Because she cares and it terrifies her. Monsters don’t care. She’s afraid she’s going to lose everything, again. Because she hates Alexander and she’s scared of him. Not for herself but for everyone else. I think she’s even a little worried for me.”

Elena tilted her head back and looked up at him. Stefan stroked her cheek affectionately. “How can you be so understanding?”

“I learned it from you,” he said with a faint smile. “And I can’t hate her for wanting to protect you. Or Damon. Or me. If I did I’d have to hate myself.” He didn’t want Elena in danger but he wouldn’t take her right to choose away from her. He’d already done that with his brother and regretted it still.

Elena nestled into Stefan’s chest and he kissed her hair. “She’s like Damon.”

“Yes,” Stefan said. “She is.” He left the thought unsaid, _‘I wonder if he knows how much his creature she is?’_

“She’s a good person under all that. I can see it. She doesn’t want to kill those people. It upset her,” Elena said, he could feel her shake her head gently against his chest.

“This is dangerous, Elena. Damon’s right. They both are. I won’t make you stay out of it if you don’t want to. But I wish you would,” Stefan said. 

“I can’t, Stefan,” Elena said. “I can’t let all of you risk your lives if I’m not willing to risk mine. I won’t lose anyone else.”

Stefan nodded tightly. “Okay.”

It pained him to admit that Damon and Claire were right. Not because his pride wouldn’t let him but because he wanted to save everyone who was a victim of Alexander. But he knew they couldn’t. He tried so hard to protect Elena for this side of what being a vampire was. The killing, the lost lives, the copious amounts of collateral damage that could occur. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t. But if he was going to put his faith in anything, it was her.

Because she had put her faith in him. Because despite everything, Elena was the only person he’d ever meet that believed in the essential good of everyone but the most evil and believed they could all be saved. Because she tried to save them despite themselves. Human or vampire.

 

***

Damon peeked into his room, expecting to find Claire there in a huff. But she was nowhere in sight. The drapes were open and the doors to the balcony were too, the drapes blowing back like streamers to reveal the star pricked sky outside, the crescent of the moon more than half-full hanging fat bellied and eternal. Damon had a moment of pure panic that Claire had gone out the window to do something astronomically stupid when he saw her move into view.

She had her back to him, leaned on the railing and staring up at the moon with a glass of scotch in her hand wearing the sleeveless cowl-necked coral blouse and coordinating slacks she’d picked out the day before. The moonlight played over her skin in pale beams, setting her in a halo of silver and suddenly it was 1927 all over again. Claire De Lune. God, he hoped Bonnie relented and made that ring.

“What do you want, Damon?” she asked. She’d heard him come in.

“Oh, don’t be cranky. I thought I told you no more moon watching,” Damon said teasingly.

“Thought you said werewolves only shift during a full moon?” Claire said.

“Just seeing if you were paying attention,” Damon said as he joined her on the balcony, pausing behind her. “See you found the good stuff,” he observed. She didn’t turn to look at him.

“Sock drawer. Eighty years and you still keep it in the sock drawer,” Claire said. Her tone with him was entirely different. Carefully moderated, deceptively casual. Damon chuckled softly keeping up the ruse between them. All was fine. Yeah, right.

“You left before the argument got to the good part,” Damon said coming alongside her.

Claire took a drink of the scotch. “I didn’t want to hear anymore.” Her face was set, deep lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. Damon grimaced, those hadn’t been there in 1927. “Are your brother and Elena always like this?” Claire asked.

“On a mission to save everyone they meet, you mean?” Damon asked. “Pretty much.”

“It’s annoying,” Claire said.

“Isn’t it?” Damon agreed. Claire shook her head.

“Why do I care?” Claire shook her head again, harder this time, as if she were arguing with herself more than speaking to Damon. She pushed off the railing forcefully and started rambling, her hands waving around animatedly. “She’s human. I’m not. Stefan’s a monster in denial. Why do I care?”

Damon caught her flailing hands and pulled them to his chest, holding them over his heart for a moment. “Because it’s who you are. It’s who you’ve always been. Because they care.”

She was on the brink of losing it. Damon could see it in her eyes. In the fevered way they searched his face for something to hold on to. Too much, too fast. She shook her head at him sadly and made a choked sound. “No. It’s not.”

Damon winced at her pain. “Time was you would have given anything for what they’re offering you.”

“I don’t want it, Damon. I don’t want it. I feel too much. I’m a liability. I don’t want any of it. How ironic is that?” she said fervently, she looked up at him and Damon’s heart broke in two. Those were his eyes looking back at him. “Every instinct in me is screaming not to feel.”

He loosed one hand and brushed his finger tips through her hair. He wanted to beg her not to do what he knew she was thinking about. Turning it off. The pain was overwhelming. The instinct was to make it go away. Flipping the switch made it go away. She’d been fighting it for years and he’d been the trigger point. He should have never left.

 “You haven’t spent the last eighty years dancing your cares away have you? The Claire I knew really did die in that alley, didn’t she?” Damon asked guiltily.

“I’m not sorry for what I did, Damon. I did what had to be. If Elena won’t protect herself. Then I’ll do it, however I have to. You don’t want her in danger anymore than I do. Why did you stop me?” Claire said neatly side stepping the question. He let her but he already knew the answer.

“Because…Stefan would have had a fit and then I’d have had to fight him, Elena would never forgive you…” Damon said playing it off.

He hadn’t let Claire do it because it was Elena and he loved her too. It would have stopped Elena but he irrationally didn’t want to disappoint her, didn’t want to do what she didn’t want. But his consciousness whispered that if it came to it he’d do it. He’d resist the urge until he couldn’t anymore. He couldn’t lose Elena anymore than he could bare to lose Claire. He’d do what he had to. He didn’t mind being the bad guy.

“It’s this whole thing,” he said rolling his eyes dramatically. “But since you told us all to go to hell and missed it, here’s the FYI—that means ‘for your information’—I got them to concede. We’re going to do it as planned. Tonight. One last whole hog, all the blood you can drink, ‘party like it’s 1999’ night on the town. No interference. Until it drives Alexander so crazy he snaps, then and there. No one dies. Everybody wins….except the Phantom of the Opera. So buck up,” Damon said. “We’re gonna party hardy and rip Alexander’s head off. Sounds like a night to remember to me.”

“Elena is still going isn’t she?” Claire asked.

“Can’t win ‘em all,” Damon admitted. Damon didn’t want Claire going either for the final showdown but Elena had his hands tied. He didn’t like it. At all. Trapped between both women he loved, unable to stop either from endangering themselves because of the other’s interference. It was enough to make a vampire crazy. “And you can’t compel her. I know it’s annoying but it’s Elena.”

He didn’t have to explain what he meant by ‘it’s Elena’. Claire got it. Claire got him. She always did. Always had. He didn’t need extraneous words with her. _‘She’s yours,’_ his conscience reminded him. _‘Always was, always will be. And if you’d only admit it you’re hers.’_

Was he Claire’s? Had he always been?

 _‘But I love them both,’_ he argued back with it. _‘You will have to choose,’_ it reminded him. _‘Not yet.’_

Claire sighed. “I can’t be what they want me to be, Damon. It’s not in me.”

Damon groaned lightly, pulled her into his arm, her back against his chest, and looked up at the moon above them. She leaned into him. “Let’s just get through tonight. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”

“I’m going to regret this aren’t I?” she asked softly.

“Isn’t that the way great nights end? You regret them in the morning?” Damon teased, deliberately misunderstanding. That got a short laugh out of her.

“Not all of them,” Claire whispered and Damon knew which ones she meant. 

“No, some of them stay with you forever,” he agreed. He leaned next to her ear, nibbling the lobe delicately and she sighed with that little noise that drove Damon crazy but he had her distracted and for now, that was enough. Wasn’t that always what they were? Enough…for now? But that warm blanket settled over him again for a brief instant. The one labeled ‘happy’, that smelled of orchids and sandalwood and felt of home.

 

***

Damon stood at the foot of the stairs, adjusting his sleeve. His ebony hair was carefully mussed and the colors he wore set off the ice blue of his eyes to good effect and he knew it. He was wearing a fitted steel gray button down with a slight sheen to it, sleeves rolled to the elbows over tailored dark jeans and polished black boots. A step above his everyday attire and a step below what everyone else called ‘office wear’ and Damon called dull.

Claire and Elena were getting dressed for the night. Of course, being girls their routine took longer than either of the men’s. Damon had told them to go all out. They were taking him at his word. Meanwhile, Damon got to stand down here and think.

“I cannot be Katherine,” he muttered under his breath.

“What was that?” asked Stefan. He had joined him without Damon noticing.

Damon looked back and forth wondering if he’d heard. “Nothing,” he said dismissively. He eyed his brother and arched a brow. “You’re wearing that?” he asked disdainfully.

Stefan had chosen a brown-gray v-neck long sleeved t-shirt under a loose blazer a couple of shades darker, charcoal slacks and loafers, the blazer sleeves pushed up.  It did nothing for his brother’s brown hair but it didn’t hide the green of his eyes at least. Humble Stefan. Stefan looked down at his clothes and lifted one lapel of his blazer.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“You look like an 80’s reject,” Damon mocked. He shook his head. “You have no sense of showmanship.”

Stefan’s ensemble wouldn’t clash with Elena’s dress but Damon had chosen his specifically to compliment Claire’s. Nothing says, ‘screw you’ like showing off your ‘togetherness’ even in your attire. Besides there was just something about it. That perfectly matched, red carpet perfection. Damon wasn’t vain …at all. Wasn’t it a rule you were supposed to match your date anyway?

“Okay,” Stefan said shrugging Damon’s fashion critique off like a duck sheds water.  Always straight to the point he said, “Claire stable?”

They could hear Elena using the hair dryer upstairs. They could speak freely for the moment without fear of being overheard.

Damon furrowed his brow. “For the moment.” He looked at Stefan. “Are you going to forgive her?”

Stefan shook his head. “No, Damon. She went too far. I’ll always be mad at her for that.” Damon rolled his eyes. Stefan and his moral high ground were enough to make anyone want to hurl themselves out a window.

 “But I’m willing to set it aside in the interest of a common goal. While her methods leave something to be desired, she was trying to protect Elena. She meant well, I won’t hate her for it. We’re on the same team.”

“Vampire solidarity, rah, rah, rah,” Damon snarked.

 “Claire gonna be able to handle this?” Stefan asked, pushing his hands into his pockets and looking at Damon pointedly.

“She’ll handle it,” Damon said. It wasn’t this he was afraid she couldn’t handle. It was everything else. What happened when Alexander was dead?

“You don’t sound all that sure,” Stefan said. Damon could have choked him on the spot. Stefan and his annoying knowing look. The one that made Damon want to punch him. Stefan cocked his head to one side. “You’re worried.”

“Of course I’m worried. We’re going into a fight we might not win. Wouldn’t you be?” Damon snarked. “I had a plan to keep them both out of it but now, thanks to you and Elena, they’re both going. I was going to snap Claire’s neck, lock her in the basement, and just not even tell Elena. But…” He glared at his brother and made a ‘ta da’ gesture. Stefan looked unfazed by it.

“You think Claire would forgive you for that a second time?” he asked.

“She’d be alive,” Damon said. “I don’t mind being the bad guy remember? She could even hate me for it.”

“You don’t really mean that,” Stefan said.

“I can’t lose her, Stefan,” Damon said with great weight. He didn’t bother to name which ‘her’ he meant. Let Stefan guess. He had enough to worry about without explaining his conflicted romantic issues to his little brother.

“The plan will work,” Stefan assured him but he had this measuring look in his eye Damon didn’t like. They had a plan. Short version? Piss Alexander off, draw him out alone, vervain him by surprise and then stake him. Nice, neat, simple. Yeah right.

“You think it will work. You want it to work. Why am I the only one who thinks it won’t?” Damon groused. The ways for this to go catastrophically wrong were innumerable. Damon didn’t like what he couldn’t control.

Stefan looked up the stairs suddenly, orienting on the sound of paired footsteps. Damon turned to follow his gaze and all thought of anything but what he saw went flying right out of his head, his breath caught in his throat.

Claire and Elena were descending the stairs like something out of a fairytale. Snow White and Rose Red.  Damon had no idea why that particular fairytale was the one that came to mind but it did.

Claire was all red passion in the one shouldered ruffle dress, the ruffles skimming down her arm and side like a rivulet of flame with matching open toed heels that hugged her small feet and accentuated the long line of leg below the dress’s hem. Her hair was done up in a modern imitation of the Ancient Greeks, cascading down her back in a tumble of raven dark curls with tendrils of it strategically coaxed to escape the confines of their pins. Gold jewelry glinted at her throat and wrists, dangled from her ears delicately.

Elena was cool serenity in her gathered royal blue dress that clung to her without being vulgar, strappy, heeled sandals on her feet to reveal a prim pedicure Damon didn’t doubt matched her fingernails. A slim anklet encircled one ankle and made her limbs look delicate as flower stems. Stefan’s silver necklace shone at the hollow of her throat and tiny feminine silver earrings twinkled in her ears. Her chocolate hair flowed around her in sleek waves that put him in mind of Veronica Lake in her heyday.

Passion and temperance. Fire and ice. Two sides of the same coin.

Damon couldn’t help but stare. Stefan was too. What man wouldn’t with them coming down the stairs? They’d out done themselves. Alexander was going to be so incredibly jealous. Every man who saw the Salvatores with them on their arms would be.

Damon couldn’t help the swell of vain pride that washed over him but with it came an overwhelming torrent of indecision, love, fear, and heart wrenching anguish. He loved them both. How could he possibly choose? He deserved neither of them and yet wanted them both. What he could have and what he couldn’t. The one who understood him and the one who didn’t. The one who loved him and the one he wanted to love him. It was maddening. And he might lose them both tonight.

“You look…incredible,” Stefan breathed at Elena as she stepped down to meet him. It shook Damon out of his trapped cycle of thoughts, though his eyes couldn’t decide who to settle on. Claire or Elena.

Damon looked Claire up and down appreciatively, taking her arm and tucking it under his. “You’re stunning,” he said. Her hands were bare and Damon fervently wanted to see the glimpse of blue on one of those fingers, soon. Again, he prayed Bonnie changed her mind.

He kissed her cheek, careful not to smudge her lipstick and she smiled, one of the slow ones that made Damon want to take her right back up the stairs and out of her clothes but there was something in her eyes that he couldn’t place. It was so brief he almost could say he hadn’t seen it. Something that whispered of gray shadows and profoundly sad. Then it was gone and he was left with a pair of warm, seductive mahogany eyes gazing back at him.

Stefan took Elena’s hands and stepped back from her for a moment to take her in. Elena turned pink as a cherry blossom. “It’s a shame we’re wasting this on a charade.”

“Speak for yourself brother,” Damon scoffed. “I have no intention of wasting anything.”

 

***

 

Claire looked at herself in the mirror as she put the finishing touches on her makeup. Unbeknownst to her Damon and Stefan were waiting downstairs, talking. She wound a curl around the one finger, letting it spring free at her temple. Her reflection looked so tired and her eyes looked unspeakably old to her. She shut them and took a deep breath to still herself. Tonight, Alexander died. Damon loved her. Nothing else mattered.

She fought not to think of how wrong this could all go. How infuriating it was that Stefan wouldn’t protect Elena even if she wouldn’t protect herself. She was so naïve, innocent really, in her way. A victim waiting to happen. It was precious actually. How she argued so adamantly for the protection of all when it wasn’t realistic. The way she believed vampires were just people with fangs and if you tried really hard you could save them. That they were good under all the blood and fangs.

And Damon…

The fierce way he and Elena argued. How fervently he had sounded when he’d insisted Elena was not going tonight and then the way he’d reluctantly backed down despite the burning desire to keep Elena out of the line of fire.  She meant a great deal to him, more than a simple friend. Claire had seen him argue that fervently with someone over their safety only once before. Her. But Damon hadn’t backed down with her.

Elena had changed him. Claire knew his kind side, how sweet he could be when he cared. How protective he could be for those he cared about. But Elena had gotten to him, he’d said it himself. She’d made him…human. That was something Claire could never do.  Claire could never give Damon back his humanity.

Why did she care if Elena died or not? She had known her a matter of days. Why’d she care about any of it? Why care? Why did it matter what Elena thought? Or Stefan, especially Stefan. She hated him…didn’t she?

It was easier not to care. One little push, that’s all it would take. _But then you’ll lose it all_ , her conscious reminded her. _All the good with the bad._ But did the good out weight the bad anymore? Claire didn’t know.

Everything had been a lie. Vincent—who she inexplicably still mourned--had betrayed her, had tried to use her to get information from Damon, to hurt him. If she hated Stefan (if she still hated him at all she couldn’t tell anymore) for what he’d done to Damon…what did that say about her?

All Claire knew was that it hurt. It all hurt and everything in her screamed to make it stop. She couldn’t be what Elena and Stefan wanted her to be. Damon understood that. He didn’t expect her to be anything but what she was...and yet. Claire shoved it away before it drove her mad. She focused on the fact that Damon loved her and how much she hated Alexander. That he was going to die tonight.

Despite it the thought crept in. _‘I can’t lose Damon. I can’t let Elena get hurt. And I can’t let Stefan die either…that would hurt both Damon and Elena.’_ And under that came fear, that she’d lose everything again and Alexander would win. That if she cared it would break her.

She turned from the mirror and strode out, her hips swaying confidently even if beneath the façade she was nothing but a existential crisis on legs. As she made her way down the hallway she could faintly hear the lilt of Damon’s voice in counterpoint to the steady thrum of Stefan’s but she paid what they said no attention. Elena had come out of Stefan’s room  at the same time she’d come out of Damon’s.

She looked at her nervously as if she were wary that Claire might try to forcibly compel her again.  The look should have been expected, should have given Claire a jolt of resolve. ‘See I’m a monster. Not good.’ But instead it cut like a whip.

“I’m not going to try to compel you again, Elena,” Claire said softly. Elena straightened a bit, the wariness dissolving. “You’ve made your choice perfectly clear.” The words rolled off Claire’s tongue like bile.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Elena said. Claire swallowed and stepped to meet her trying to think of what to say. They were standing on the landing of the stairs.

“I’m respecting your choice. But I’m not sorry.”

Elena nodded. “And I don’t forgive you. It’s not fair to take someone’s free will from them even if you don’t like their decisions. But I understand you were trying to protect me.”

  “I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree,” Claire said feeling at once both grimly unapologetic and awkward.

“I guess we will,” Elena said. She tucked her long glossy hair behind one ear absently and her face changed. “You look really pretty.”

For some reason the sudden compliment made Claire almost burst into tears. What was wrong with this girl?  Claire made herself smile. “So do you.”

Elena looked down at herself shyly. “I kind of feel weird in this dress. It’s a lot lower cut than I’m used to. I look silly in it,” she said making a face. She looked like a little girl afraid she’d be laughed at, at her first dance recital, vulnerable and unsure.

“You look fine. The trick is to wear it as if you know you look good. You could wear a paper bag and make it look extraordinary that way. It’s not about the dress, it’s about the attitude,” Claire said without even thinking about. She didn’t know why she bothered but she had.

Elena put her shoulders back and composed herself. She smiled brightly at Claire. “Well then. Let’s show Stefan and Damon our attitudes.”

Claire smiled despite herself, spurred by Elena’s and nodded. Together they descended the stairs in step with each other, heads held high, adopting the aforementioned ‘attitude’. Scarlett O’Hara would have been proud.

The effect was worth it, as they came into sight Stefan and Damon turned and stood stock still, gob smacked. Elena perked up further under Stefan’s adoring gaze and Claire preened under Damon’s. She couldn’t help herself. She still got a thrill out of him looking at her as if he was seeing her for the first time, as if he were falling in love with her all over again. Her spirits rose a little.

Damon was dashing as ever, deliberately attired to compliment her own outfit and devastatingly handsome. Stefan didn’t have quite the panache that Damon did but he still looked very put together and suave in his own way.

Then Damon’s eyes drifted to Elena and the look in them didn’t change. They still gleamed with adoration and love. Claire felt something inside her grow cold and wail piteously. He was in love with Elena too. It was 1927 all over again. Claire wasn’t enough.

She’d lost Damon to Katherine and now there was Elena who looked so much like her but was everything Katherine wasn’t. She couldn’t lose Damon again. His love of Katherine she’d accepted because he’d loved her first. One side of Claire brain calmly said she didn’t resent him loving Elena either. That there were eighty years between then and now and that Claire had no right to presume he had to love her over any other. That she didn’t deserve him anyway since their relationship had begun with Vincent using her as an unknowing spy, as a weapon to hurt Damon. The other railed and banged its fists against her skull until they were bloody, that she’d come before Elena. That this time it was her turn. That she’d hoped with Katherine gone she had a chance with Damon. Was nothing hers and hers alone?

She wasn’t enough. She’d never be enough. She couldn’t blame him. Look at what she was and what Elena was. Elena was human, kind, innocent, understanding to a fault and blind to the predator that lurked in every vampire. What was Claire? A hedonistic, wanton, self indulgent, impulsive, temperamental, blood-sucking monster who had been used to try and harm him, knowingly or not.

 _Get it together_ , her conscience said. _He told you he shouldn’t have left. He said he’d never leave again, that he’d made the wrong choice. You know he loves you. Damon doesn’t lie about that sort of thing. He almost died to protect you from Alexander. You don’t do that for someone you don’t love. Elena is with Stefan. He can love more than one person but what does it matter if Elena doesn’t love him back? Don’t let them see. You have to kill Alexander or none of it will matter anyway. You’ll all be dead._

But oh god it hurt. The hurt over took the hate and it was all Claire could do to take that final step off the stairs. She barely heard Stefan gushing over Elena’s beauty. It sounded distant and muffled. Turn it off! Just turn it off! her instincts screamed desperately. NO! She slammed the door on it so hard she felt it vibrate in her skull. She choked on her grief and her anguish as Damon took her arm and tucked it into his, looking down at her with all the same adoration and love as he ever had. She was moving out of habit. Reacting without thinking due to years of training. Vincent’s training. Damon leaned in and kissed her cheek and she smiled without telling herself too, struggling to get a hold on the last vestiges of her sanity before she lost it altogether.

He looked down at her and blinked at her curiously. Claire tried harder. There, there it was that tenuous balance. She found it. He _did_ love her. Elena was with Stefan. She was going to kill Alexander.

Sound retuned and she moved again of her own volition.

“Speak for yourself brother,” Damon scoffed. “I have no intention of wasting anything.”

Damon’s cavalier and salacious expression changed into one of seriousness.

“So, we’re clear on what we’re doing? No talking about it out loud once we’re out the door. Alexander _will_ be following us. He’s too pissed off not to. He’s going to want to see for himself. Doesn’t mean he won’t have a sidekick riding shotgun though.”

Everyone nodded and Claire patted herself on the back for appearing utterly normal when what she wanted to do was have a breakdown.

“We make him nuts, get him alone and then the _fanged folk_ vervain him,” Damon went on. He looked pointedly at Elena. “You stay back. Just because you have a vervain dart doesn’t mean you try to play Buffy. Got it?”

“I’ve got it, Damon,” Elena said with a long-suffering tone.

“Do I even want to know where you have that dart hidden?” Stefan asked eying Elena’s dress. She waved her clutch. “It’s in here.” Stefan looked at Claire his eyes slid up and down bewildered. The unspoken question obvious. Where exactly could Claire have put hers?

“Don’t ask,” Claire said and even managed a wry grin. Fake it til you make it.

“Yeah,” Stefan muttered slightly embarrassed. Damon leaned sideways and eyed her too, his eyebrows wobbling. He made a face and shrugged with a grin, imaginative thoughts about where the vervain dart Claire had was hidden.

“Since we’re all about choices and opinions, I’d like to say again how much I dislike this incredibly bad idea,” Claire said firmly. It was worth a shot right?

Damon nudged her in agreement affectionately. “What she said.”

“Duly noted,” Stefan said obviously immoveable on the subject. Damon sighed.

“No complaining about what you see. Don’t like it look the other way,” Damon added again looking directly at Elena when he said it, though he spared half a glance for Stefan too.

“Fine,” Elena sniffed.

“Good,” Damon piped. “Nobody die,” he advised. With that he escorted Claire to the door and the foursome walked out into the night as if they had not a care in the world to paint the town red, literally and figuratively.

 

***

 

By the time the group made it into Charlottesville it was close to midnight and the city’s nightlife was in full swing. Even as Damon found a parking space near the back entrance to the club, which was locked and unmanned, they could feel the thrum of the club’s music vibrate through the asphalt like a heartbeat. You couldn’t tell what song was playing this far out but the bass filled your veins and made them hum.

“Faces, people,” he reminded everyone and got out of the car with all the swagger of a man who knew his worth and expected it to be respected, arrogance and vanity dropping from every pore. This was going to be one hell of a show.

The club’s sign blazed in incandescent bright purple above them. ‘Euphoria’. They had decided not to go the art show route, it was too languid and quiet for what Damon had in mind. This was hedonism and debauchery at its best. Dark, sweaty, and loud. It wasn’t normally the type of club he would have picked to spend his night in. He preferred punk or rock but it was exactly what they needed for the night’s ‘festivities’.

Damon opened the door for Claire and extended his hand to her. “My lady,” he said, his eyes discreetly scanning the area for the hint of a follower. He saw nothing but he hadn’t expected to. Alexander was too good to be seen before things even got going. Claire got out like she’d scripted it. Damon grinned. She probably had.

First came one long fingered hand that went in his followed by a lithe leg. She flowed out of the vehicle like she was being poured in reverse to slid onto his arm with perfect grace. Damon couldn’t help the wiggle of his eyebrows. Stefan and Elena did their best but they didn’t hold a candle to he and Claire. This was their element.

They walked in procession, there wasn’t any other word for it, to the front of the club as if they owned it. Stefan and Elena paired behind them. Damon didn’t even bother to hide the egoistical look on his face as every single head in the exceeding long line at the door turned to look at them as they passed. When Claire put on a show, everyone noticed. She had after all spent the better part of a century making her living doing it.

No one would have known that underneath the veneer they all wore they were strung tight as a wire. Every sense on high alert and cautious. That they were the living bait for a trap they might not walk out of.

They didn’t pause to join the line they went straight to the front and stopped as if they’d never thought to need the line in the first place. Stefan and Elena came along side. Stefan appeared at ease but Elena looked slightly nervous.

“Do your thing, sweetie,” Damon murmured in Claire ear. She moved from him to the doorman like a slinking panther and Damon looked on pridefully. Damn, he’d missed watching her work her magic.  He leaned over and whisper to Elena and Stefan.

“Watch this.”

Elena shrugged. “She’s going to compel our way in.” Damon snorted.

“She doesn’t need to compel anyone,” Damon insisted. He motioned to Claire and the doorman with his chin. Claire was winding the man around her finger with ease. He looked like he was going to drop at her feet any second and beg to worship her. “That Elena is pure unadulterated talent.”

“They’re not going to let me in if she doesn’t,” Elena hissed. Damon arched a brow and grinned lopsided.

“Oh they will. Trust me. And more.”

“Then she’s paying them off,” Elena said certain.

Damon sniffed. “Hardly.”

“And that isn’t manipulative?” Stefan asked deadpan. Damon gave his brother an indignant look and scoffed.

“That’s not manipulation, that’s performance art.”

Stefan looked dubious but the door attendant waved someone out of sight over and then bowed Claire through. She turned, beckoning them to her and Damon strode forward dropping his arm around her waist as they four of them entered unimpeded.

“I feel like I’m in a music video,” Elena muttered behind Damon and Claire.

“Or we’re Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s entourage,” Stefan said. Damon just grinned.

The instant the door shut behind them to the global annoyance of the waiting line outside, it was like they’d been picked up and dropped into the middle of a ‘Tron’ remake. Everything was a rainbow of laser lights, dance music and neon. Abstract light shapes flitted across the dance floor and over the glow jewelry bedecked gyrating dancers as they moved to the pulse of the music coming from what seemed like everywhere at once.

Black steel catwalks hung around the second floor perimeter of the sunken dance floor leading to tables that looked down to the floor. Bars with trendily attired bartenders and outlined in neon hugged the outside of the dance floor, bracketed before and behind by more tables. The place was a living breathing cacophony of sound and movement that catered solely to vice. Vampire Zanadu.

Damon halted them neatly on the edge of the dance floor. He looked over the crowd and saw the person the doorman had called over at the bar talking to the bartender and pointing in their direction. Damon grinned. Gratis drinks courtesy of a very compelling vixen on his arm no doubt.

“I am going to get us drinks. Many drinks,” Damon announced. “Stefan?” He looked to his brother, taking everyone’s drink request. Something to loosen the gears as it were. Stefan looked like he would rather be anywhere but here. Even if it were all the game they were pretending this was, Stefan wouldn’t want to be here. This was not his scene. He didn’t care for dancing that much.

“Whatever you’re having.”

“Elena?”

“I think I might need one,” she admitted.

“My dear?”

“Strong and plenty of it.”

“Shots it is,” Damon. “You decide who’s for dinner.”

He kissed Claire’s hand flirtatiously and slipped away from her flamboyantly. She smiled slyly as he departed for the bar. Half the eyes on them followed Damon, the others were still latched onto Claire. He heard Elena behind him before he got out of hearing range without stretching his senses to do it.

“How do you get them to do that?” she asked Claire in mild awe, she motioned at the sea of people who kept casting curious and enthralled glances at them.

“Far too many years of practice,” Claire answered. She sounded world-weary. Damon grimaced slightly as he disappeared into the throng for the bar, reminded harshly of the seriousness of their ploy and the possible losses involved.

He leaned over the bar and called loudly to the bar tender. “Eight shots.” The bartender, an oriental girl with her stick straight hair up in pigtails like an anime character nodded. Damon took a moment while she got their order to look back as he posed against the bar.

Claire was still in perfect form, a beacon of sensuality and attention but under it, Damon saw what was hidden. She looked like she was completely alone out there, as if she weren’t a part of anything around her, lost. She even seemed removed from Stefan and Elena who flanked her appearing a little more at ease with the atmosphere as Claire scanned the crowd for dinner, Alexander or any of his minions. Stefan and Elena were doing the same in the other direction.

The bartender tapped his shoulder and put a small tray with the ordered shots on it in his hands. “On the house,” she told him.

“Of course it is,” Damon chuckled. When he looked back Claire was looking directly at him and he paused a moment at the expression in her eyes, that gray shadowed look she’d had before for only an instant. Then it was gone and she arched a brow at him in a come-hither manner.

Damon shook it off and returned with their drinks. “Inebriation is the order of the hour. Drink up,” he encouraged as everyone plucked theirs from the tray and Damon set it aside on the nearest available surface. He lifted his drink and played to the illusion for Alexander who was no doubt watching, he twined his arm around Claire’s as she raised her own and locked eyes with her. He was half looking for that shadow in them again but he didn’t see it, it had receded into the depths. They drank in unison. Then switched arms and did it again.

It was a very intimate thing, a lovers’ gesture. Especially since with shot glasses they were all but pressed against each other to accomplish it with grace. Damon set their shot glasses on the tray nearby. His hand hovering near his hip pocket as he surreptitiously touched the keys on his cell phone.

 _Anything?_ He sent to his brother.

Stefan leaned to set his and Elena’s glasses down and Damon got back, _Not yet._ Damon slid his phone back in his pocket, on with the charade.

“Who’s for dinner, gorgeous?” Damon asked Claire, looking out over the crowd.

“I thought I’d be spontaneous,” Claire said. Damon cast her a look. So it was the first person who happened by close enough who struck her fancy then. Damon could roll with that. Or maybe it was that her mind was on what lay beneath the game and hadn’t been paying attention to the writhing buffet.

“Coming brother?” Damon called back over his shoulder.

Stefan pulled Elena to him. “I’m good,” he said. Elena played her fingers across his shoulders as if she were happily awaiting becoming a meal for her boyfriend. Damon shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Mingle people. It’s a rave, not a funeral,” Claire piped.

“Well, not for us anyway,” Damon teased. It sounded like he meant whomever they ate. He meant Alexander. With that, he pulled Claire with him into the press of bodies on the dance floor in one fluid motion. Stefan and Elena disappeared from view behind them.

The beat changed as they hit the floor and bodies moved aside to accommodate them, eyes flicking over to see what they would do. Damon pulled Claire to him and they sank, hip to opposite hip, toward the floor dropping into an automatic grind. Her eyes captured his and a slow salacious smile spread over his face. He knew that look, it held him fast as surely as if he’d been compelled and they moved. Snaking and slinking together in time to the music. Claire was going all out and Damon wasn’t immune to it. He surrendered himself to it and felt Claire reel him in like a fish on a hook.

The world narrowed to only them and their purpose, a tenuous balance between the sexuality laced show they were putting on that made Damon’s head feel light and the constant vigilance for Alexander and his minions. Danger, passion, love. It was heady, almost surreal and the hunt over took them both.

Damon, however, wasn’t sure exactly who was hunter and who was prey anymore. It was 1927 again in that moment and Damon felt like Claire was hunting _him_. The temptation in the way she moved, the look in her eyes. Lust was there, oh yes, but it was also love. That indefinable thing that hovered between them that felt like a tether between them. He loved her as much as he ever had.

This he couldn’t get with Elena. Even if she loved him. The shared hunt, the mutual understanding with no judgment. The ability to just _be_. Elena didn’t accept him, not completely. With Claire it was like a key slipping into a lock. All the pieces fit and yet this was different than before. She wasn’t as free as she had been, the light was dimmer, strangled. The wild, untamed creature he’d known chained and wounded. She seemed to be trying to seduce him all over again but at the same time there was a desperate frantic feel to it. As if she were afraid to let him get too far away because he might disappear into thin air. Damon decided it was tension. Concern for Alexander stalking them. Everyone was prey and predator tonight. Except Elena, she was just prey. Why had she had to come? Stubborn girl.  He felt a pang in his heart.

His eye landed on Stefan and Elena. Somehow, she’d managed to convince Stefan to dance and Elena was trying to coax him to get into it, to let go but he danced like a wooden figure, self conscious. Stefan knew how to dance and Damon knew it but his brother never had known how to let go and revel without his humanity off or jacked up on human blood. Elena, meanwhile was trying to enjoy some tiny bit of the night. Damon knew this was beyond uncomfortable for her, to watch him and Claire out here actively hunting down food. Damon had a flash of embarrassment and shame that made a responding curl of anger unfurl inside him. Why couldn’t she accept who he was? Why should he be the least bit embarrassed by being what he was?

Elena was out of his reach. She didn’t understand him or accept him and she was his brother’s girl. Elena had point blank told him ‘it will always be Stefan.’ But the heart doesn’t listen very well, it wanted what it wanted. Elena cared for him. Maybe she even loved him but it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t in love with him, like he was with her.

 Elena made him yearn for her affection. Claire consumed him and took him on whatever wild ride she was on. Swept him up in her wake, turned him inside out and it felt right. It always had. He was gasoline, she was fire, and he wanted to stand there in the flames and burn forever. Her arms felt like home and the scent of orchids and sandalwood invaded his head like a toxin.

 _‘She’s yours. Always has been, always will be. She gave what Katharine never did, unasked for. What Elena has refused._ ’

His cell phone vibrated against his thigh and he peeked at it a reminder that this wasn’t just a night out. It was a text from Elena. _‘Brad Cooper. Green shirt. By bar’._

Damon teasingly tilted Claire’s head up and pointed her eyes in that direction. She looked at him knowingly. They were all on the same page. All the players were on the field. Fear crept into him. Both women he loved were in danger tonight, one more than the other but the real possibility existed they’d both die if they didn’t play their cards right.

A girl brushed along Claire’s back in passing and Claire moved. It was quick, efficient, no movement wasted. Claire was showing off. She had the girl in her clutches instantly, pulling her between them.

“Be still. Be quiet,” she said in a voice that slid over Damon’s skin like warm velvet despite the fact it was the girl Claire was compelling.

The girl went still and Damon watched Claire’s face change as she sank fang into the girl’s neck, the true nature of what they were doing covered by the darkness of the club to anyone who wasn’t looking for it. He smelled the heady tang of blood and his eyes shifted in response. He glanced in Stefan and Elena’s direction, Elena saw and looked away quickly, appall written all over her face. Stefan looked away too for an entirely different reason. Damon caught the hint of red in his brother’s eyes and knew he was hiding his face from Elena. Fighting his nature, the urge to join them.

Damon grimaced, looking back at Claire and the girl. Claire lifted her head and looked at him over the girl’s slim shoulder, blood on her lips, eyes languid and hazy from the feed. An open invitation to join her. Damon smiled and brushed the girl’s hair away from the other side of her neck, lowering his head and biting down. The girl was sandwiched between them, him behind and Claire before both of them feasting on her blood. A show for Brad Cooper who they knew watched them intently.

The rush of feeding poured through Damon, the girl’s heartbeat pumping her blood in synch with the music suffusing him with the pleasure of fresh blood coursing over his tongue. He pulled back at the same time Claire did, panting, eyes heavy lidded. Fresh blood was so much better than bagged and he couldn’t come up with enough words for how disgusting animal blood was.

Claire looked the same as he did, swaying lazily under the intoxication of the shared feed. The girl tilted faintly from foot to foot between them as Damon gave in to the urge to reach across her body and catch a stray droplet of her blood that clung to Claire’s lips, felt her sigh against his fingertips. He sucked it from his thumb suggestively.

Claire gently pushed the girl from between them, capturing her eyes again, “Forget us. Enjoy yourself. We did,” she compelled her breathless and then she was in Damon’s arms again her mouth pressed to his in a wanton kiss as she cleaned any trickle of blood from his lips. The girl wandered off dazedly, smiling like an idiot.

_‘This is where you belong. You’re happy when you’re with her. You’re hers. She’s yours. Admit it. Accept it. Before it’s too late.’_

 

***

 

Claire was floating on a tide of blood. Letting it take her and do what it would. Allowing the pleasure take her where she couldn’t go anymore and gave herself over to it. Made herself because if she didn’t she was going to come apart in Damon’s arms and kill everyone around her.

She focused on the hunt, the feed, the blood, going from one victim to another and taking what she wanted from them, releasing them in a haze of compelled ecstasy as she once had. But now it was only an act. She did it because Alexander would expect it, Damon expected it. She no longer cared if those she fed off of liked her or not. What was the point? Everything was a lie and the walls were coming down around her. It was all broken and all that was left was destroying Alexander.

Being everything Elena and Stefan didn’t approve of and Damon went with her, succumbing to it as readily as she did. For a moment, Claire could forget that Damon was in love with Elena too, that she was second best for the second time. That he was hers alone as Brad Cooper prowled the fringes of the crowd watching them like a stalking wolf. Almost not bothering to hide his surveillance of them. They were certainly giving him a show but neither she nor Damon had seen Alexander yet. But he was there, Claire could almost feel his baleful and furiously jealous eye ride along her skin despite having no such ability to feel another vampire. 

Elena and Stefan had retired to a table with drinks. Elena feigning being tired and trying not to watch Damon and Claire with distaste and Stefan obviously distancing himself from Claire and Damon’s feeding frenzy before his desire to partake overcame him and he did what it was in him to do. They all kept a careful watch out, texts flying back and forth. Elena was proving to be the easier go between for that, since her texting openly didn’t look out of place. High school student texting her fingers off at a club? Not even a second glance would be given to it.

“Claire,” came Damon’s voice distantly. Claire barely heard him. She felt his hand settle on her shoulder.

“Claire, step away from the ledge,” he urged, his grip tightening a bit. He’d only just released his own walking snack pack and compelled her off. This one was Claire’s alone and she sank her fangs deeper not wanting to let go, caught up in the feed.

“Claire,” Damon hissed in her ear and she managed to get a hold on the need to drink until her victim was dry. She lifted her head gasping and sagged backward against Damon, the guy she had been feeding on standing in place dully as his bite wound seeped. Damon’s arm went around her waist steadying her, both of them swaying slightly under the influence of copious amounts of blood. Around them were slews of people they’d fed on all absurdly happy because Claire had told them to be.

“Insatiable,” Damon teased her, but when she looked up at him, there was a slight line between his brows despite being as blood drunk as she was. Claire had never had a problem releasing her prey before she killed them in Damon’s experience. Not after Vincent had found her and taught her how to be a vampire. Vincent, just the thought of him made her want to wail in grief and scream with anger and betrayal. Damon looked faintly worried for an instant then Damon grabbed the dazed man by the shirtfront and dragged him closer.

“Off you go. Nothing happened. Be happy and all that,” Damon compelled him lazily. The man nodded. “Okay.” He stumbled off. The compulsion would hold but Damon was blood drunk and reveling in it just as she was. He turned her in his embrace and she slid her arms around his neck both of their heads lolling back on the high. “You’re drunk,” Damon teased.

“So are you,” Claire said. Damon bit his lip playfully. “Mmm,” he murmured stroking her hair as they danced. It was free and wonderful, the two of them like they used to be. If only for a moment, Damon’s focus completely on her. He captured her mouth with his and it was pure bliss. Claire’s cell vibrated against her thigh and she was jerked from her moment of joy. Her hand slid down her hip to pull her phone from the garter beneath her dress. Elena. Of course.

Claire felt a sharp pang of resentment course through her that she squelched violently. Elena wasn’t at fault for Damon being in love with her. Come to that, Damon wasn’t at fault either. You loved whom you loved. But couldn’t it be Claire Damon loved most? Just once? First Katherine and now Elena. But Elena was with Stefan. And yet, Claire couldn’t wish any harm on Elena. For herself, for Damon’s sake more than ever she wanted Elena to be safe. Because what hurt Elena would hurt him. Stefan being harmed would hurt both of them and Claire’s entire existence became to protect Damon and all that entailed because she had never loved anyone the way she loved him. It was too much too contemplate and the blood rush was making her heady.  She focused on the phone.

 _‘Behind you,’_ it said. Claire glanced up at a hazy eyed Damon and flicked hers to make him look behind her. His eyes sharpened. Brad Cooper was there, only a writhing body or two away. Damon grinned wickedly and pulled Claire up onto a raised platform on the dance floor, making them very visible. Then he promptly started to resume kissing her. Claire stopped him, knowing he was doing this for Alexander’s benefit as much as because it felt good and he wanted to.

She tilted her head back, exposing her throat and Damon sighed against her, his fingers moving to trail over her neck, to touch the artery there as it thrummed beneath his fingers. He knew exactly what she was suggesting and it was guaranteed to enrage Alexander as he’d never been enraged. Damon smiled drunkenly and slid behind her. With a quick lick along the line of her throat, her back pressed to him, Damon bit down.

Claire gasped with pleasure only to find Damon’s wrist offered in front of her, she didn’t hesitate to take it. Blood sharing on the dance floor. To everyone else they looked like two lovers making out. But Alexander would know exactly what they were doing. So would Stefan. Brad Cooper would be sure to tell Alexander. Damon and Claire might as well have been making love in front of everyone present. It was blatant and voyeuristic in the extreme. _‘Let them all see,’_ it said.

The euphoria was instant, the fire that blazed along Claire’s skin spontaneous and all consuming as they drank from each other. It burned and coursed through her veins, made her heart swell and her body throb. Claire fell into it, gave herself over to Damon completely. She’d have let him drain her dry in that instant. Utter and complete surrender. All Claire knew was Damon.

Brad Cooper snarled and disappeared into the crowd. He’d seen and knew what it meant. He’d report back to his master promptly. But Claire didn’t stop Damon. She relished every single moment because she feared it would be the last. This was a show but Claire knew what she’d seen. Damon was in love with Elena as well as her. Claire had no hope of comparing. If she even survived the night.

 

***

“They act drunk,” Elena said watching Claire and Damon on the dance floor. They were all over each other and had just let go of their latest victim. She’d just texted Claire that Brad Cooper was slinking around behind them like a bad parody of the paparazzi.  No one had seen Alexander yet but she reluctantly reserved the fit of protest that if they hadn’t seen him, he wasn’t here for later. She was being very reasonable she thought given the circumstances. To her Damon and Claire looked like they had been drinking fifths of tequila all night.

True to her word she hadn’t said anything about their exploits. She was having a hard time making herself swallow what they were doing but she reminded herself repeatedly that this was the lesser of two evils. But she couldn’t help but think Damon had half done it simply because he wanted to and to spite her. “They can’t be drunk. They’ve had almost nothing to drink.”

“Those two are like fire and gasoline.” Stefan pushed his untouched glass of whiskey around the table absently and snickered sardonically. “They’re blood drunk.”

“What?” Elena asked looking at him sharply. She tilted her head a little in confusion. She’d seen them feed a couple of times and hastily looked away but they hadn’t done it but a couple of times.

“You see all those ludicrously happy people down there?” Stefan said motioning to the dancers on the floor around Damon and Claire. They were all blissfully happy as far as Elena could tell. “They’re Claire’s. She’s compelling them to be that way.”

“But _all_ of them are that way,” Elena said in astonishment. Stefan lifted his brows at her in a confirming gesture.

“She’s good. She and Damon are both very good at covering their tracks. I’ll give them that.”

Elena looked horrified. “Oh my God. Why would she do that to them?”

“I don’t know. A thank you for donating?” Stefan mused with dark humor.

“That’s not funny,” Elena said sternly.

“Sorry,” Stefan answered casting his eyes down at the table again. He wanted to be out there with them. He wanted to do that. To pick someone off that dance floor and sink his fangs into their throat. Only Stefan couldn’t do what they were. He couldn’t stop. He’d drink until his victim’s heart stopped, until he ripped their heads from their bodies in a frenzy. It’s where the term Ripper came from.

Elena placed his hand on his. “Are you okay?”

He smiled at her faintly. She knew he was having a problem dealing with the blood flowing only a few yards away, that he had issues controlling himself. She’d even been trying to help him learn to manage it.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, she started to turn her wrist over and he knew she was going to offer it to him. He had been drinking little bits from her daily, only a trickle at a time, to built up his tolerance for human blood. The theory was that if it were Elena he fed from he wouldn’t lose control because he loved her, he’d be able to stop. Stefan felt the veins around his eyes start to fill, for his eyes to shift at the sight of the blue tracery of veins beneath the translucent skin of her wrist. He turned her wrist over and looked away.

“I can’t,” he said. “If I did I’m not sure I could stop. Not now. Not with all the...” He stopped, he couldn’t even say it right now without wanting it.  Elena rubbed his arm comfortingly and Stefan kept his gaze diverted until he could get control. But it almost made things worse.

He saw Damon and Claire writhing together on one of the raised platforms and then he saw Damon sink his fangs into Claire’s neck. Stefan felt blood rush to his face for an entirely different reason. Embarrassment. “Oh God,” he said and looked away, shielding his view with one hand. “Can’t take them anywhere.”

“Huh?” Elena said and went to look. Stefan grabbed her wrist and tugged.

“No. Don’t. It’s embarrassing.” Elena subsided taking his word for it.

“Well,” Stefan muttered. “If nothing else got Alexander’s attention _that_ will.”

After a moment, Stefan hazarded another glance. Damon was deliberately licking the blood from Claire’s throat, leaving it clean, the wound closing before he could even finish. Stefan winced with a rush of renewed embarrassment. This was worse than walking in on Damon in bed with a woman. At least that was by accident. Brad Cooper had disappeared.

Damon swung Claire down off the pedestal and together they came drifting languidly toward the table looking incredibly gratified.  Damon dropped down into the chair next to Stefan, pulling Claire down into his lap with him. She laughed and it was light and airy.

A laugh Elena hadn’t heard her use before, it sounded like bells and she knew that the voice behind it was capable of great beauty. She thought it sad that Claire no longer sang. Was she happy because she was taking advantage of people and was drunk on blood (that caused a flash of disappointed anger. She was better than that!) or was it Damon? Her eyes glittered at him as he swiped his brother’s drink and threw back a slug.  She looked at Damon the way Elena looked at Stefan.

“Excuse me,” Elena said, rising to the table. “I need to use the bathroom.”

Stefan started to rise automatically but Claire beat him to it.

“I’ll go with you.”

Claire got up, Damon’s hand slipping over her hip as she rose. Stefan sat back down.

“I can go to the bathroom by myself,” Elena said a little irked. She was having a hard enough time stomaching their blood binge, she didn’t need a baby sitter her pride insisted.

“Not tonight you can’t,” Damon snarked.

Elena rolled her eyes and sighed heavily.

“Don’t girls go to the bathroom in lil groups anyway? What is with that? Is it genetic?” He looked at Claire. “Do vamp girls do it?”

Claire snickered but the glitter in her eye was gone and she looked profoundly sad to Elena suddenly. “Okay,” she said suddenly, ending the possible argument before it had begun. Maybe Claire needed a moment too. What could happen? It was just a trip to the ladies room. She moved to go and Claire fell into step beside her, together they made their way through the crowd, down the short corridor for the doors marked ‘Girls’. The men’s room was marked ‘Guys’. Both signs glowed in the dark of the club as they passed by a brown haired guy in a hoodie that leered at every woman who passed.

 

***

 

Stefan watched Elena and Claire go for a moment before turning to his brother, one ear tuned through the cacophony of club noise in case Elena needed him, in case something happened. “Having fun?” he asked with a hint of admonishment in his voice.

“In fact, I am little brother,” Damon retorted, obviously saying it just to get on Stefan’s nerves. His furtive eyes said his ‘fun’ was dramatically tempered with worry and vigilance. A century and a half and they still threw barbs at each other like teenagers. Some things never change.

“Yeah but…that?” Stefan said a little exasperated.

“Don’t start Stefan,” Damon said.

“It’ll get his attention if anything will, I’ll grant you that,” Stefan agreed reluctantly. He motioned toward the entrance door with his chin.  “There goes Brad Cooper.”  The football player was exiting the building purposefully, his stride very focused.

“Going to tattle to Alexander. Means we can talk without being overheard for a minute. You realize that with Alexander having been in Mystic Falls for weeks not days that the likelihood of Katherine being involved goes up exponentially?” Damon observed.

“Yeah,” Stefan said darkly. Damon was right about that and he knew his brother hadn’t brought it up before now because he didn’t want to rattle Claire further. This was the first chance he’d had. “Is this what you two did together in 1927? Live like vampire lushes?”

Damon shrugged. “More or less. Mostly less. We had fun but this is extreme even for us. We’re cranking it up to eleven for Alexander remember Stefan?”

That gave Stefan some measure of comfort. At least this wasn’t their usual idea of a night out on the town. Damon grinned at Stefan. “Jealous, brother?” he teased. Stefan just looked at him. Damon knew very well Stefan wasn’t the least bit jealous about him and Claire blood sharing. He just liked antagonizing him.

“All that,” Damon went on, waving toward the dance floor and the gyrating bliss compelled throng, “could be yours. If you’d only let it.”

Stefan glared at Damon. One barb hadn’t worked so they were back to Stefan’s presumed inability to learn control on human blood. Stefan didn’t see it as a lack of learned control, it was an addiction. Damon just wouldn’t accept that.  Stefan turned it on him.

“I don’t know they all look a little pale currently. Claire certainly can eat. Don’t you think she was getting a bit out of control out there?”

Damon rolled his eyes. “Notice the lack of reassembled decapitated bodies?” Damon bit.

“Let’s see. Two at the clothing store, another three before we got out of the mall, I can’t even begin to count the number she’s fed on here and she goes through blood bags like no tomorrow.”

 “She wasn’t out of control, she was having fun. We’re a predatory species. We enjoy the hunt, the feed and the kill and when the guilt gets too bad we switch off our humanity and revel in it.”

“And yet, you don’t want Claire to turn off hers. You two looked like you were reveling just fine, humanity and all,” Stefan rebuked. Damon glared at him.

“It’s more of dimmer switch. You know that.”

Stefan let it go. He knew why Damon didn’t want Claire to turn her humanity off. He didn’t have to make Damon say it. Though it was tempting, just because Stefan was feeling a little self-righteous. He was afraid if she did she wouldn’t love him anymore and maybe just a little he feared she’d be a Ripper, like Stefan.

“Why does she do that?” Stefan asked curiously, waving at the ridiculously blissful dance floor population.  Damon sighed and grew serious, he played with the drink he’d stolen from Stefan for a moment.

“It’s her trademark. No one Claire feeds from ever goes away unhappy. She wants them to like her,” he said softly.

Stefan’s brows went up.

“Or she did. I think she’s doing it now because I expect her to. Because Alexander would. I don’t think it matters to her anymore. She’s just going through the motions.”

“You sound like that bothers you,” Stefan noted.

Damon shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong, Claire’s all vampire but that’s not Claire. I had to pull her back from the ledge twice out there. Claire doesn’t kill to feed, it not her thing. In a moment of blind rage, definitely. But not like that. She plays a good game but it’s not her,” Damon said his voice becoming soft and pained.  “She’s become me.” He leaned back in his chair.

“I thought ‘being you’ was a good thing?” Stefan asked quizzically. He refrained from asking ‘What was that about her not being out of control again?’ When Damon was the voice of reason, in a sea of self-indulgent vampire hedonism, something was terrible out of balance.

  “I’m fine with her either way but you didn’t know her then, Stefan. She was light and laughter. Wild and untamed. Free. I’d never meet someone who could just _be_.  I didn’t learn that from Sage, I learned it from her.” He waved in the direction Claire and Elena had gone. “Not that.”

Stefan looked at his brother and frowned. “Maybe this is who she is now, Damon.”

Damon rarely got introspective like this at least outwardly. He always had a joke or a turn of phrase to flippantly brush it off unless he was in an outright fit of anger. It had to be the effects of the blood drunk.

“For a year, a year, I forgot how much I hated you. I forgot about Katherine and the eighty-two years it would be before I could free her from the tomb. I forgot I promised you an eternity of misery. I forgot everything. I was _me_ again. She made me feel alive, Stefan.  I was happy. And God help me, I do love her,” Damon said, his tone despondent.

Stefan realized he wasn’t so much a party to the conversation as an ear for Damon to pour his tumultuous thoughts into.

“She’s the only vampire I’ve ever met who has never flipped the switch. She didn’t want to lose the good with the bad not even in her darkest hour. But now…,” Damon said trailing off. Just as quickly, he switched tracks again. “You know what she told me once? ‘Why do I need the sun when I have you?’ How do I, of all people, deserve that? After everything?” His voice turned bitter. “I don’t do the right thing. I pick the wrong girl. I don’t deserve her Stefan and I can’t be selfish with her. She deserves better than me. I can’t love her the way she needs to be. She needs someone who can love her completely, without reservation. Not me. I did this.”

“I don’t think you’re responsible for…” Stefan started to say, to acknowledge that he was listening but Damon was on a roll and he snapped his mouth shut. Stefan had no idea where this was coming from. He knew what Damon was hinting at. His inability to choose between Elena and Claire. He didn’t have to be told. He’d been hoping that Damon would choose Claire and leave Elena where she belonged. With him. Elena loved him not Damon. Stefan, jealous? Of course not. That begged the question though, why was he jealous if he had nothing to be jealous of?

“You know in 1977, when you ‘sent’ me Lexi in New York because my humanity was off and you thought I _had_ to be ‘saved’?”

“You mean when you locked Lexi on the roof and left her to burn after you tricked her into thinking you were in love with her and had turned your humanity back on?” Stefan accused darkly. He hadn’t forgotten Damon had killed his best friend not quite a year ago. That was always going to be a sore spot with him. Damon ignored the jab, his voice low.

“You both thought Katherine was the reason. It wasn’t. It was Claire.”

Stefan gawked at his brother; he couldn’t even find words to respond to that. Damon had flipped his switch because of Claire not Katherine? He hadn’t seen that coming.  Why the hell had he ever left her then? Damon and his tendency to sabotage anything he felt he didn’t deserve was going to end up leaving him all alone one day.

 “She’s slipping, Stefan. If she turns it off I don’t think she’ll ever turn it back on.”

“Then don’t let go,” Stefan said.

Damon’s head swiveled to look at him with such intensity he felt it hit him like a heat wave. Stefan started to respond to that but the ear he’d had tuned to Elena in case of emergency, despite Claire with her as her body guard, picked up the unmistakable high pitched sound of Elena’s terrified scream. Damon must have been listening too because they were both on their feet in the same instant.

“Elena,” Damon breathed. Both Salvatores bolted for the bathrooms.

 

***

 

“Seriously, how long does it take?” Claire asked impatiently, her voice echoing slightly off the walls, the music outside had faded to a dull thud. She was leaned back against the long sink counter that ran opposite of the bathroom stalls. It was surprisingly empty in here, no one but them at the moment. Elena had been in the stall for what felt like forever, Claire had already refreshed her lipstick and tucked her hair back into place. Not a drop of blood marred her makeup or her dress. She and Damon had been very neat if indulgent.

Claire touched the join of her bare shoulder, fingers lingering a moment where Damon had drunk from her wistfully for an instant.

“However long it takes. Don’t vampires have to pee?” Elena shot back. She was still irritated Damon thought she needed an escort to the bathroom like a toddler. Claire didn’t care if she liked it or not. There was no room for taking chances just now. 

Why did she care? Objectively she shouldn’t. It was easier not to, didn’t hurt. She didn’t want to care. But she did. Claire hated that she cared. But hate was just another emotion. Lots of that the last few days. Hate, love, pain, anger. Heightened emotions sucked.

She cared not only about Elena as a human who had helped a vampire with no hope of gain, not just because anything that happened to her would hurt Damon but because she liked her. She genuinely liked her despite her constant self-righteous preaching about ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘being good’. Why Claire cared for Damon needed no explanation. And Stefan she cared about because Damon and Elena cared about him, and just maybe she thought he might not be that bad. He was after all, despite his hypocritical preaching and cow towing to Elena, trying to help when he frankly had nothing to gain from it. She cared about Vincent even though he’d betrayed her, used her… and so it went.

Claire snorted and turned, picking through the decorative bowl of hand soaps and perfumes on the counter. “I’m dead. What do you think?” It came out more bitter than she had intended, colored by her conflicted emotions. She didn’t think Elena had meant the question seriously. Surely, with a vampire for a boyfriend she knew the answer.

Elena finally came out and spread her arms slightly. “Done. Happy?” Claire looked at her and sighed. There was no way Claire could live up to Elena. Damon wouldn’t choose her. Why should he?

“Not in a long time. Let’s go,” Claire said, pushing off the counter.

“In a hurry to get back to the ambulatory buffet?” Elena said with apparent disapproval as she quickly washed her hands. She dried them on one of the little hand towels stacked on the counter and tucked it into the basket under the counter.

“I thought we agreed, no judging?” Claire said sharply as they strolled for the door, their heels clicking on the linoleum floor.

Elena held her hands up. “Not judging, it’s just…,” she trailed off. “Never mind.”

No. Claire could never live up to Elena or her expectations. Of course, Damon loved her more than he did Claire. All that innocence and genuinely moral good wrapped in a package that looked like Katherine Pierce. What was there not to like?

“So vampires don’t pee?” Elena asked turning the conversation to humor.

“One of the great mysteries of the universe,” Claire snarked. Elena laughed as something clattered to the floor, starting to push the door open. Claire stopped. Her cell phone had slid out of her garter. She bent to pick it up. “Hold on,” she told Elena.

“I can walk ten paces without a chaperone,” Elena said exasperated, she went out the door.

“Elena, wait,” Claire hissed, snatching up her cell phone.

“You’re pretty,” said a male voice. Elena screamed.

Claire moved. One second she was behind the swinging door Elena had just exited through the next she was in the corridor. In a glance, her vampire senses tabulated what was happening.

The brown haired guy in the hoodie they had passed going in to the bathroom had Elena shoved against the wall. A rag in hand, trying to force it over Elena’s nose and mouth. Would be rapist. Elena had one arm loose trying to shove him off and prevent him from clapping the rag over her face. The scent emanating from it was distinctive and more than a little familiar. Chloroform.  Like a bad acid flashback, it sent Claire reeling backward in time to Alexander’s abduction of her. Rage filled her to over flowing in a lightning flash.

“Pick on someone your own size,” she hissed.

Claire grabbed the man by the arm and twisted, swinging him out away from Elena and smashing him against the wall, her hand closed on his throat and she lifted until his feet kicked uselessly for the ground.

“Please don’t kill me,” the man gurgled pleadingly.

“Know what the problem with being a predator is? There’s always a bigger fish.”

The man was wide eyed with terror at what he saw. Claire, fangs bared, eyes hell-red and growling like an animal, tilting her head back to strike.

 

***

 

Damon and Stefan arrived on the scene with Claire in mid-strike. Elena was on the floor, half slumped against the wall.

“Don’t kill him!” Elena pleaded with Claire. Who was about to take a large bite, a killing one if Damon was any judge, out of a flailing man jacked up on the opposite wall like a coat on a hook.

“Elena,” Stefan said rushing to her side and helping her to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. He tried to attack me. Claire stopped him,” Elena said, stumbling. Damon could smell chloroform fumes coming from the rag on the floor where the man Claire had a hold of had apparently dropped it.

Claire looked back over her shoulder at Elena askance, still vamped out and furious. “ _Don’t_ kill him? He was going to hurt you.”

“Please. I’m sorry,” the man pleaded. Claire snarled at him, a feral sound. He whimpered pitifully.

“Shut up,” she compelled him. The man went quiet, his hands feebly clutching at Claire’s wrist in a futile attempt to free himself.

It was immediately apparent to Damon what had happened. The idiot pinned to the wall had tried to knock Elena out and take her. It was darkly reminiscent of Alexander’s original abduction of Claire. The guy was a dead man. Claire wouldn’t suffer him to live, it struck too close to home.

“Remember what I told you about not killing the messenger before you get the message? He may be compelled,” Damon said, stalling her in case he was Alexander’s minion. Once they knew one way or another, Damon didn’t care. He’d tried to hurt Elena. He wanted him dead.

Damon dashed to Elena’s side, taking her face in his hands. “Look at me,” he demanded worriedly. Elena was already trying to bat his hands away, hugging Stefan’s side. He searched her face, pushing strands of her hair out of it delicately, but found only the slight disorientation being exposed to chloroform fumes brought. Who was this guy that he had been trying to chloroform a girl in a club’s bathroom hallway? “I’m fine.”

“Tell me the truth. Do you know who I am?” Claire asked the man.

“No. No I swear,” the man wheezed. Claire was going to kill him by degrees, her hand kept tightening in rage on his esophagus.

“Have you been following us?” Claire pressed. The man was under Claire’s compulsion. He had to answer unless Alexander had compelled him not to. In which case, his answer would be vague or evasive.

“No,” the man gurgled. The man was a random douche who’d seen Elena and thought he’d found a easy victim. He picked the wrong girl.

“He’s not compelled. Now you can eat him,” Damon said with a shrug. Claire reared back again.

“No!” Elena and Stefan said aghast in unison.

“What do you mean ‘no’? Don’t give me that goody-goody crap,” Damon said in outrage. He waved at the man who was starting to turn blue Claire was squeezing so hard. She kept being told to stop mid-bite and she was already enraged. She was stiff and trembling with it. “He tried to hurt Elena.”

“Let the police take care of him,” Stefan urged.

People were starting down the corridor for the bathrooms and Damon jumped to stop them. He caught them a few feet away. “Nothing to see here. Move along. These are not the droids you’re looking for,” he compelled them. They blinked and turned around.

Now he had a problem. Stefan and Elena on their high ground trying to talk a incredibly pissed off Claire out of killing Elena’s would be attacker and crowd control. Potentially very messy situation. He kept looking back to keep an eye on things.

“Let her kill the slime ball,” he urged.

“So they can let him go? He’ll just do it again to someone else,” Claire said to Stefan. Her voice was mixed between a human voice and an animal’s feral growl, her eyes weren’t shifting back. She had no intention of releasing her prey. She was too angry. Yet, she hadn’t killed him yet. She could have snapped his neck faster than anyone could stop her. She was fighting with the desire to kill the man and the desire to ‘be the better person’ Elena and Stefan kept touting.

“He’s human,” Stefan said soothingly.

“And I’m not, so I don’t care,” Claire snapped back and opened her mouth again to sink her fangs into the man’s throat.

“Let him go,” Stefan said a bit more forcefully, releasing his supporting hold on Elena when he was sure she was steady on her feet. He started to reach out toward Claire, to pull her away.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Damon warned.

The instant Stefan got too close, Claire turned her head and growled warningly at him. A low constant rumble, like a panther keeping a competing predator off its kill.  It was wholly animalistic; there was nothing human at all in the action. Stefan snatched his hand back hurriedly. Elena stepped back appalled, a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. Seeing a vampire go feral always made her horrified. Seeing what lay beneath the surface, the predator that lurked there.

“Claire, don’t please. You’re better than this. You’re making him a victim. Just like you were made a victim by Alexander,” Elena begged. “He’s powerless against you. It’s not fair.”

 

_***_

_She_ was victimizing _him_? Had Elena taken leave of her senses? She was advocating for Claire to let this monster go? Did she think only vampires could be monsters?

Claire shook with barely controlled rage. She wanted to kill the man so badly she could already taste the sweet metallic saltiness of his blood on her tongue in anticipation. Feel his heart stagger and halt as he struggled uselessly to get free. How dare Elena compare her to Alexander.

Elena and her ‘fairness’. If she said it one more time, Claire was going to lose it. She’d been protecting her and now she wanted Claire to let the monster go? So he could do it to someone else?

Be the better person? Was she joking? It infuriated Claire all over again. Don’t kill the compelled minions of Alexander that would stop at nothing to kill them. It’s not right. Don’t feed off humans and compel them to forget, use a blood bag or better yet eat a bunny! Don’t kill the douche bag who attacked me for no reason other than he own gratification, he deserves better! Be better! Be human!

“Elena it’s a bad idea to bring him up,” Damon warned warily from his position diverting people who kept trying to use the bathrooms. Claire had seen him rush to Elena. Seen the way he’d stroked the hair from Elena’s face worriedly, concerned, love in his eyes. Why? Why? Something in her railed desperately.

“It’s not fair. You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is?” Claire spat glaring at Elena. “I’m victimizing him?” She laughed, a barking maniacal sound. “Do you know what he would have done to you? Let’s ask him shall we?” Claire pinned the man with her eyes.

“Claire, stop,” Stefan demanded but he didn’t try to pull her away again. He knew if he did she’d turn on him unable to stop herself. She didn’t know if he didn’t want her to compel the truth out of the man because it would sicken Elena or what, she didn’t particularly care at the moment.

“Tell them, in detail what you would have done,” she snarled.  It was half the need to prove that the man was a monster, human or not, to Elena and half the predatory desire to play with her prey. She looked back at Stefan and Elena. Damon hovered watching everything his face pensive as he maintained crowd control. “Survey says.”

The man spoke like a robot he was so far under Claire’s control. “I was going to knock her out. Drag her in the alley behind the dumpsters. Rape her and then strangle her.”

“Now who’s the monster?” Claire said.

Every vampire present went red eyed, fangs bared and there was a collective growl. Knotting closer together, like a pack of wolves deciding the prey actually did look worthy of killing. The man saw and whimpered flailing against the wall. It only served to incite the three further. The base creature in them, anger provoked, excited by the possibility of struggling prey. It was more fun when it struggled. Damon and Claire hissed. Stefan recovered first, glancing away and growling in rejection of the urge, getting a hold on himself. He wouldn’t let his nature overcome him, wouldn’t give in. Damon only backed down when someone tried to shove past him for the bathroom. He grabbed them roughly.

“Leave,” he compelled. They bolted. But it was enough for him to get a grip on himself, barely.

“But he didn’t,” Elena pleaded again but there was renewed terror in her eyes. The truth hurts.  Claire knew that intimately. Everything she’d believed to be true had turned out to be a horrible lie. “You stopped him. You saved me,” Elena continued trying to appeal to Claire’s good side.

“Kill him. If you don’t I will,” Damon growled. “No. We’ll both kill him.”

“No!” Elena said sharply. “Damon, what is wrong with you?”

“Are you deaf?” Damon spat.

“Compel him.” Elena said to Claire, ignoring Damon.

“Compel them, don’t compel them. Make up your mind,” Claire snarled.

“You can make him a better person. You can make sure he never hurts anyone again,” Elena pleaded.

“It won’t change what he is, Elena. Only what he does. Don’t you get that?” Claire said incredulous. “He’ll always be a monster.”

“Let us teach this ass wheel a life lesson,” Damon snipped. Stefan stepped to block him, a hand on his brother’s chest.  He glared at Stefan but Stefan was looking at Claire.

“Compel him and let him go. He’s so terrified now I doubt he’ll hurt anyone ever again,” Stefan said firmly.

“No,” Claire said viciously.

“Claire, please. I am begging you,” Elena said. “It’s not fair.”

Something snapped inside Claire’s head. No, it wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair. Nothing had ever been fair. The world wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t fair. Alexander. Her parents. Vincent. Damon. Nothing was fair. Nothing mattered.

“You want fair?” Claire said, eyes still red. They’d never stopped being. She couldn’t pull herself back. Not anymore. “I’ll give you fair.”

She rounded on the man, shoved him back so hard by his shoulders they popped. “Not a sound,” she commanded. Then in a broken crazed growl, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

 

***

 

“Oh my God,” Stefan breathed in horror.  Claire was staring hard into the man’s eyes and his mouth was open in a silent wail, tears welling in his eyes. “Claire. Stop.”

“What’s she doing?” Elena asked looking from Stefan to Damon. Stefan was too sickened to answer. “Is she compelling him?”

“She’s in his head,” Damon said looking on. Someone else came down the corridor and Damon compelled them away. Crowd control was becoming a problem.

“Doing what?” Elena demanded to know.

“She’s making him live through what he would have done to you,” Damon said woodenly but inside he was as horrified as Stefan. Not at what Claire was doing but that it was Claire doing it. This was not the Claire he knew. She’d never have done something like this. “She’s scarily good at it too.”

Most of the time, to cause someone to hallucinate or invade their dreams, the victim had to be asleep or weakened. Human or vampire. But Claire was doing it with the man awake and on hyper alert in terror. Riding the man’s fear like a surfer to access his mind and turning it in on him. Alexander hadn’t needed his victim to be asleep either, he’d done it to Damon with him fighting for his life on a brewery floor.

“Oh my god,” Elena said. The man’s mouth was opening and closing now in silent screams. It was macabre to watch to say the least. Elena grabbed Stefan’s shoulder. “Do something!”

Stefan looked at his brother, he didn’t know what to do. She wouldn’t listen to them. “Stop her, Damon. She’s out of control.”

“You wanted fair. Be careful what you wish for,” Damon said. The man’s body was spasming on the wall like it was a torture rack. Elena looked away burying her face in Stefan’s chest to hide from it.

“Make her stop. Please,” Elena begged sobbing.

“Damon, do something,” Stefan demanded. Damon looked from Elena to Claire. He didn’t want Elena traumatized but he didn’t know what to do, not to mention he thought the guy should be dead anyway. If Elena hadn’t compared Claire to Alexander, if they hadn’t kept pushing, she’d have killed him and been done with it. He’d never have believed her capable of this. He’d never seen her this angry and that was saying something.

“What do you want me to do, Stefan? You asked for fair. You got fair. You should have let her kill him,” Damon rebuked.

“Please, please Damon,” Elena begged and Damon softened. She was horrified, terrified of what she was seeing. A vampire pushed too far. Even Damon had only snapped Jeremy’s neck when he’d finally had enough, been too hurt not to lash out.  Claire’d gone off the deep end without a life jacket.

Security guards were coming down the corridor. “Who’s barricading the bathroom?” one demanded.

“Crowd control,” Damon told Stefan. He nodded and gently extracted himself from Elena’s hold, going to intercept security. She stood there her hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks. Damon crept closer to Claire, quietly but not so quietly she’d attack him by provoking a predatory response. Claire wasn’t Claire right now, she was the animal all vampires were deep down.

 “Claire, it’s Damon,” he said gently. “Stop. Please. You’re upsetting, Elena.”

She paid him no attention. He hazarded reaching out a hand, trying to ignore the mimed screams of the man on the wall she was inflicting his own cruelty on. As far as Damon was concerned, he had it coming but for Elena’s sake he’d try to bring Claire around. If it were just the two of them he’d let things run their course. If it had been just the two of them he’d have long since let Claire kill him. But instead Stefan and Elena had pushed her screaming over the edge in the name of moral superiority.

 “Claire, stop it!” Elena sobbed desperately.

Damon placed his hand on Claire’s shoulder, shooting Elena a look that said ‘shut up!’. “Claire, you’ve made your point. People are going to notice. It’s upsetting Elena. Let him go,” he said his voice a low steady murmur, a soothing timbre to calm an angry animal.

 “Claire, please,” Elena wailed and moved a pace closer as if to come to them. Damon looked back at her and motioned for her to stay back. “Stay back. I’ve got this. She doesn’t have control right now. She could hurt you without meaning to.”

Damon hazarded a fast glance down the corridor. Stefan was turning away all comers, looking back worriedly between compelling them to go away, to see what was going on.

 Claire’s shoulder relaxed a bit beneath Damon’s hand and her eyes cleared. The man was sobbing in silence, still dangling from Claire’s grasp limply.  Damon gave a sigh of relief. He didn’t know if it had been him or Elena’s pleading that had gotten Claire’s attention but it didn’t matter. Whichever it was, it had worked.

 “Don’t hurt him,” Elena pleaded in a tear-choked voice.

“Leave. Don’t speak a word of this,” Claire compelled, her voice clipped. “But remember all of it. Every second. If you hurt another living thing as long as you live, I will hunt you down and I will kill you.”

The man nodded, eyes wide and white rimmed like a frightened horse, a broken and crazed look in them. Claire let go and he slid down the wall, his knees giving. He scrambled, half running half crawling away until he gained his feet, whimpering the entire way,  heading toward Stefan who had just cleared away all the people crowding into the corridor’s entrance.

Claire was focused on the wall where he had been, tension still apparent in her limbs, eyes normal but deeply shadowed. Damon moved back a step slowly giving her space now that she’d released her prey. Claire shook her head as if mildly confused.

“No,” she muttered.

 At the same time Elena shook her head rapidly in horror, blinking tears from her eyes. “How could you do that? It was horrible. It wasn’t fair.”

Claire went still as stone for an instant. Damon saw it coming and then she moved. Damon tried to grab her but she dodged, flash stepping down the corridor.  Stefan tried to get her from behind but it was too late.

She intercepted the man she’d only just let go. He screamed in terror as her eyes shifted again and she seized him, jerking him back by the hair of the head. The scream cut off in a wet gurgle as her teeth sank in, the familiar sound of cartilage popping as sharp fangs tore through his esophagus, the ripping sound of flesh. Blood spouted in a great gout down the man’s front. He went limp and Claire dropped him. Nothing but a bag of bones at her feet, the gaping maw in his throat seeping wetly as blood started pooling on the floor. She hadn’t drained him, she’d simply killed him brutally. Even Damon was momentarily stunned.

Claire looked dead at Elena, blood dripping from her mouth and chin. “When are you going to realize, Elena? Life isn’t fair.” She looked at Damon and back to Elena. “For any of us.” She stepped over the man’s body and stalked for the end of the corridor, toward an exit door that was barred and locked. Claire wrenched the door open, breaking the lock on the door like it was nothing to step out into the night.

All of them rushed to follow. Stefan and Elena dashed off and Damon was on their heels. He stopped, doubling back. Someone had to do something about the body. He grabbed the first person he saw, seizing them by the shirt and pulling them close.

“There was a bar fight. That guy’s throat was cut by a broken bottle. You didn’t see anyone,” he compelled the  wide eyed young man he’d seized. The boy nodded dumbly. It wasn’t ideal but it would have to do. Damon turned and bolted.

 

***

Claire stalked out into the alleyway behind ‘Euphoria’ without a glance behind her. If they followed so be it. She didn’t care. Which was an outright lie. If she didn’t care she wouldn’t be so furious, so upset.

She wiped at the blood on her mouth and chin with her bare fingers, licking it off them for lack of something else to remove it with. Stefan and Elena stalked behind her in a tiff. Damon came close behind them and followed their footsteps.

“Where do you think you’re going Claire?’ Damon called after her lightly as if they hadn’t just left a man with his throat ripped out behind them. “We came in my car.”

Claire didn’t know where she was going, just that it was away from here. Anywhere but here.

“You can’t do this anymore, Claire. Not around me,” Elena shouted at her. Claire stopped in her tracks and turned so abruptly Elena nearly slammed into her.

“Why not? It’s not anything I haven’t done before,” she said incredulous, trembling with the rage that still rushed in her veins.

“Elena,” Stefan said soothingly, he reached for his girlfriend who was obviously distraught. Elena jerked away from him.

“No, Stefan. She can’t do this. I won’t let her!”

“Claire,” Damon tried in perfect mimic of Stefan.

“You won’t ‘let’ me?” Claire bit. “And how exactly are you going to stop me?”

“I’ll stop you,” Stefan promised, his face set in quiet anger. Claire glared at him.

 “Will you? That’s the second time you’ve stood in my way. I wouldn’t try a third,” Claire said tightly and spun on her heel stomping away again.

“Claire, you don’t mean that,” Damon said catching up to them and coming alongside Claire.  Claire stopped again and scoffed at him, her gaze circling to include all of them.

“Why is it suddenly so important for everyone to keep me in check?”

“Because I don’t want people to think you’re what you _think_ you are!” Elena cried.

“What? A monster?” Claire snapped. “Sorry to disappoint you Elena but the last time I checked I was still a vampire!”

“I just wish that you didn’t have to act like one!” Elena shot back tearful again. Claire let out a harsh breath through her nose. She wanted to reach out and strangle Elena where she stood but at the same time, she wanted to sit down and wail in bereavement for everything she’d lost.

“I am not Stefan. Stop trying to turn me into him.”

“People die around you. It’s wrong and you know it!” Elena said so overcome with upset she tried to slap her. Claire caught her hand and held it.

“None of this matters to me. None of it,” she growled. She released Elena’s hand. “I’m not good, Elena. No amount of blood bags or eating Bambi and playing pretend will change it. This is who I am,” Claire cut her eyes at Stefan. “Don’t kid yourself, it’s who he is too.”

Claire turned and stomped away for the third time, Damon keeping pace with her. “Claire. Calm down,” he urged.

“You’re better than this, Claire. I know you are!” Elena called after them but she hadn’t followed. Claire spun around again.

“Stop trying to save me. I don’t want to be saved.”  Stefan looked at the pavement his face crestfallen. Elena looked deeply sad and taken aback. Claire’s brows twitched, she would not break down. “I can’t be,” she whispered as she turned away.

 “Claire,” Damon said and reached for her, to gather her to him in his embraced. She reacted without thinking, driven by emotion rather than rational thought. She shoved him away, sending him flying across the pavement in a skid. “Don’t,” Claire said her voice strangled. Damon was back on his feet immediately, looking a little angry and confused by her reaction.

“I know you’re in love with her!” Claire shouted at him. Damon stopped in mid-step. Stefan winced and Elena’s brows rose in surprise. Claire swallowed hard, tears welling in her eyes and shook her head sorrowfully. “Is my love not enough?” It came out small and plaintive.

Damon sucked in a breath making a soft choked sound and blinked, his expression stark anguished shock. Claire didn’t know the painful echo she’d wrought. He had begged to know the same thing of Katherine once, long ago. Damon took a step forward, shaking his head gently. “Claire, I…,” he began to say.

“Well this is a thing of beauty,” called a voice down the alley.  

 

***

 

All heads swiveled toward the sound of the voice as someone stepped into the faint light of the alley. His hair gleamed gold in its illumination and he was wearing a green polo beneath a lightweight casual blazer, jeans and sneakers, carrying a wooden stake in his hands that he tapped rhythmically into his opposite hand, the lapis lazuli of his recently acquired daylight ring shining dully on his right hand.

“If it isn’t the towheaded psychopath,” Damon spat.  “I wondered when you’d show up.” He looked Alexander up and down derisively as he strolled toward them with the air of someone who has already won. “What are you supposed to be? The sixth Backstreet Boy?”

“Nice to see you too, Damon, “ Alexander said smoothly, a smug smile pulling at his mouth. “Though I must say our last meeting was a bit too…inflammatory…for my taste.”

“Alexander?” Elena breathed looking at him in surprise. Seeing what most saw, the baby faced, handsome young man only a year or two older than she was that he had been before he’d turned. Stefan pushed her behind him protectively.

Claire took one look at him and sprung like a hunting cat with a ferocious growl. A blind attack she had no hope of making work. They’d brought vervain to a stake fight. He’d kill her. Damon raced after her, snatching her back and behind him, his grip so tight on her arm she couldn’t get away. “I will break your arm,” he hissed at her over his shoulder.

“Still feisty as ever aren’t you my dear?” Alexander mocked. Damon tightened his grip as Claire’s arm spasmed convulsively with anger.

“I’m going to kill you,” Claire said.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Alexander said. “I see all the cards are on the table now. Very exciting isn’t it? It all fell apart far more quickly than I had hoped for though. Bravo Damon, you’ve out done yourself.”

Damon snarled in anger. He hated Alexander almost as much as Claire did. He refrained from pointing out the ‘fell apart’ had been caused by a random event and then had a domino effect rather than anything Damon had done directly. It had all snow balled very suddenly.

“You can’t kill all of us,” Stefan intoned. Alexander canted his head and looked at him scrutinizing.  “One of us will take you down.”

“Stefan, is it? Damon’s younger brother?” he said. “I didn’t come here to kill anyone. Yet.” He peered over Stefan’s shoulder, lifting his chin to do so and motioning with the stake. “And that would be the lovely Elena behind you” Stefan’s brow furrowed. “Oh yes. I know all about you. I know about all of you. I wouldn’t try anything. Brad’s a very good boy.” 

Alexander waved idly behind them. They looked to see Brad Cooper standing there with a gun in hand. Most likely loaded with wooden bullets. Enough to down the vampires and kill Elena. Alexander looked back at Damon.

“Go on. Finish what you were saying before I so rudely interrupted. Is Claire’s love enough?” Alexander taunted.  Damon tensed and sneered, his jaw tightening. “You see, I already know you’re in love with Elena. One hears rumors. The crazy, impulsive Salvatore in love with his brother’s girl. It’s all very ‘Days of Our Lives’ don’t you think?”

“Who told you that?” Damon snarled.

“A little bird. She was very helpful. You might know her. I think she was the last woman you loved over Claire.”

Damon felt Claire tremble against him. Alexander was getting under her skin, because Damon had gotten under her skin and he was using it against them both. But she didn’t try to pull away and attack Alexander again. Because if she did Elena was dead and she knew it. They’d survive the barrage of wooden bullets and someone would certainly be able to get to Alexander long enough to vervain him with the darts they carried even if they were staked in the process, but Elena would be dead before they could stop it.

“Katherine,” Damon grumbled. “I knew she was involved in this. Little bitch is probably dead and she’s still haunting us.”

“Ding, ding ding!” Alexander said applauding. “Very good.”

“She help you get your daylight ring?” Stefan hazarded a guess.

Alexander looked at his hand, tilting it back and forth as if admiring the bit of jewelry. It was a square inlay of lapis in a heavy square setting of simple silver. No frills. “Yes, she did. Do you like it?” he asked casually. Then he snarled at Damon. “I’ve been planning this for decades but I couldn’t find you, only where you’d been. Always a step behind. Then who should give me a call a few weeks ago but the long forgotten Katherine Pierce. Seems she had a problem she needed help with and wouldn’t I like some revenge? Something about you being in the way of her diabolic plan to destroy Klaus, or at least bargain for her freedom, because you were too set on protecting the precious doppelganger.”

“So what? This was her contingency plan in case we didn’t cooperate?” Stefan asked.

“More or less,” Alexander confirmed before returning to his evil monologue of doom. He’d always been full of himself. “Of course, I said yes. Katherine always was persuasive.”

Damon grimaced bitterly. “Katherine’s good like that.”

 “She laid it _all_ on the table, Damon. Told me where you were, where Claire was. All of it. I got my girl and her caretaker and Katherine set me up here. Though, she did disappear rather abruptly a few days ago…again .But you know Katherine, always coming and going like the wind. Though I was expecting more in the way of support. So, I’ve been winging it. I was supposed to wait until she gave the go ahead but while the Kat’s away the mice will play.”

“Got a thing for puns now or something?” Damon snarked.

“Katherine’s dead. She betrayed us to someone and they betrayed her to Klaus. He took her,” Elena spat nervously from behind Stefan.

“Well that explains it,” Alexander mused, he shrugged. “ _C’est la vie_. Where were we? Oh, yes.” Then he turned back to Damon making a shooing motion at him with his hands. “Go on. Tell her. What’s the saying? ‘Truth will out’? Tell her, Damon. Tell Claire how she isn’t good enough for you, again. Twist the knife in her heart…I did.”

Claire jerked against Damon’s hold and he tightened it again. That was a dirty blow. All of Alexander’s barbs were. He’d driven a knife into her heart to kill her after he’d force fed her his blood to turn her. He was trying to provoke her to attack.

 “Screw you,” Damon snapped. Alexander stepped forward and Damon stepped back, pushing Claire with him, keeping the distance equal. Stefan turned, herding Elena behind him, moving toward Alexander’s offside and away from Brad a few paces. They couldn’t attack and they couldn’t run but they could try for more strategic positioning. If they could get Alexander between them, they had a chance.

 “Come on. You know you want to. Can’t you feel it? All that emotion she’s never turned off, fought so hard to hold on to? Her humanity? Ticking away with every breath, like cogs on a wheel. I wonder what she’ll be like when the last one tocks?” Alexander dug.

“You want her to turn it off,” Stefan realized.

“Oh yes. Because that’s the one thing she has left. Her humanity. It’s the one thing Damon so coveted about her,” Alexander said to Stefan. Then he looked at Damon. “And if I break her. I break you. I knew if I left Claire for you, you’d fall in love with her all over again and history would repeat itself. That’s your weakness, Damon. Love. First Katherine, now Elena and poor Claire, second best for a second time. So your little show and tell, flaunting your renewed love affair without a care in the world to piss me off? Was all for not. It only served to confirm my plan was working,” Alexander said with a broad grin.

He lazily sauntered across the breadth of the alleyway forcing Stefan to herd Elena back the way they had come, giving up the few paces they’d gained. Damon pulled Claire in the opposite direction to compensate and she stepped with him.

“So now that we’ve all showed our hands, let’s up the stakes shall we?” Alexander twirled the stake in his hands as if to emphasis his point. Damon looked back and forth between Alexander and Brad. Who was going to do what?

 “Damon he’s going to…,” Claire started to say but Alexander was faster.

“Think you can take me? Let’s see how you deal with this.”

Alexander rushed Damon and Claire at the same time that Brad turned the gun on Stefan.

“Elena run,” Stefan said.

Damon drew his vervain dart from his pants pocket and pushed Claire backward, believing it was her Alexander was coming for but his hand touched thin air. Claire wasn’t there.

Brad fired in quick succession. Vampire or not, Stefan was only so fast and three shots to the midsection took him down before he could get him and Elena out of the way.

“Stefan!” Elena cried, sinking to the ground with him.

Damon meanwhile, looked where Claire had been only for her to be several paces away. She snatched something from her garter and tossed it in his direction as Alexander dashed toward her. Her vervain dart.

“He wants Elena!” Claire said. Damon grabbed the dart out of the air and pursued Alexander. Claire turned and ran for Brad to stop him, if he downed all of them they wouldn’t be able to stop Alexander.

“Elena, run,” Stefan pleaded. He couldn’t fight, not until he got the wooden bullets out.

“I won’t leave you!” Elena cried, clutching at him desperately. She fumbled clumsily with her clutch and pulled her vervain dart out in case Alexander got to them then started working her hands down Stefan’s torso, finding his vervain dart and pressing it into his hand. She resumed working her hands down his body, trying to find the bullets and pull them out. Stefan tried to bat her way, pleading with her to run.

Claire descended on Brad with a vengeance, he spun and fired and Claire kept coming. Taking the bullets, knowing he was going to do it all for the one action of removing Brad from the equation. Four bullets assailed her before she was on top of him and with the last of her strength she grabbed his head and twisted, snapping his neck. They both slumped to the ground.

Damon leapt at Alexander’s back, intent on driving first one and then the other vervain dart into him but Alexander spun on his heel and caught his hand in an iron grip, plunging the stake toward Damon at the same time. Damon caught his hand, having to drop one of the vervain darts to do so, and they were locked together, one trying to prevent the other from landing a blow.

Alexander barreled Damon back into the alley wall, causing the bricks to crack on impact and Damon let out a pained huff but he kept trying to force his hand, while preventing Alexander from driving the stake into him. Alexander twisted Damon’s wrist, bending it backward. Damon yelled as the bones snapped, the vervain dart dropping numbly from his fingers. Alexander pulled back at the same instant and flipped the stake, thrusting it up into Damon’s stomach. Alexander chuckled as Damon groaned in pain and dropped to the ground.

Then Alexander sprang toward Stefan and Elena. Stefan stabbed feebly at Alexander’s legs but Alexander only kicked him, causing him to double up in renewed pain and flicking his vervain dart away with his foot. Elena jumped to her feet and scrambled backward, vervain dart raised, her face a mask of fear and there was nothing any of the vampires could do about it. All of them were trying to push themselves up, to move to her aid uselessly.

Elena tried to stab Alexander with the vervain dart and he smacked it from her hand. Then he seized her and was gone. The vervain dart hit the alley pavement with a tinkle of metal and Damon, Stefan and Claire were left lying on the ground gasping, looking at each other in dismay.


	10. Chapter 10

Claire lay on her side panting in pain, fingers automatically probing the places in her torso where the bullets had entered. “I’m going to kill him,” she seethed. It would have sounded a lot more threatening if she wasn’t moaning in pain as her fingers sought the bullets inside her.

“Elena!” Stefan called desperately into the night, peering down the alley where Alexander had disappeared with Elena in tow.

Damon gave a deep groan as he pulled the stake from his abdomen, letting it clatter hollowly to the ground. He tried to raise himself up on his knees. “It’s too late, Stefan. Alexander’s long gone.”

Claire found a bullet and grasped it, crying out as she pulled it free. It hurt coming out as much or worse than going in. At least going in it had been faster. She flung it away.

Stefan roared with grief, whacking the pavement uselessly with his hands in hurt anger. Damon yelped as he jerked his broken wrist back into place.

What a damn mess. This had been Alexander’s plan all along. To play them against each other unwittingly in a winner take all revenge gambit. All masterminded by Katherine Pierce. Everything had gone to hell in a hand basket. If physical pain hadn’t been her focus at the moment, Claire might have snapped altogether. It was what Alexander wanted. For her to snap and turn it off.  Claire wondered briefly if stark raving mad would be a suitable alternative.

Damon crawled his way to her as Claire fumbled for the second bullet. He pulled himself into a sitting position beside her, hands slick with his own blood. “Here,” he said gently. He reached to move her hands and remove the bullets himself.

Claire hit his hands away. “Don’t,” Claire breathed. “I’m fine.” Damon winced and looked saddened.

“Claire,” Damon began to say and reached again for her hands, to move them out of his way.

Claire shook her head minutely. “Don’t Damon. Don’t say anything. I can’t… ” her voice choked off. Damon pulled his hands back, his brow deeply furrowed. “Help Stefan,” Claire suggested.

She couldn’t stand for him to make some apology or try to come up with an excuse. She didn’t know what he would say but the fear that it would be ‘I’m sorry I love Elena more than you,’ was too much. If he did she wouldn’t be able to take it and right now, they needed all vampires on board. Just ‘I’m sorry,’ for whatever reason would be enough to send her over the edge and over again.

“Okay,” Damon said with a tiny nod, in a voice that was barely audible as he slunk away, rising half to his feet to stumble toward Stefan who was far more weakened by the wooden bullets than she and Damon.

Claire resumed bullet removal as Damon went to his brother’s aide, pulling the second bullet free with a straining pop that made her yell with pain. It had been caught between her ribs.

Damon pushed Stefan back down gently, as he was struggling to get up and follow where Alexander had gone without any regard for himself or the fact that it was pointless or that he couldn’t follow anyone in his condition. “Stay still,” Damon demanded.

He pried out the first bullet with no ceremony. He jerked it free none too gently and flung it down sharply.

“We have to get her back,” Stefan said desperately, groaning as Damon looked for the second bullet.

“We wouldn’t have to get her back, if you had listened,” Damon growled angry and upset at the same time.

“I hate to be the one to tell you ‘I told you so’,” Claire spat from her own prone position. She almost had the third bullet, it was buried deep in her abdomen, her dress was a total loss. She pulled it out with a grunt. “But ‘I told you so’.” It came out spiteful and angrier than she had intended.

“We had him, Stefan,” Damon said extracting the second bullet and tossing it.

“We didn’t have him. He was waiting for this,” Stefan moaned.

“Yes, we did,” Claire panted, managing to sit up in a very unladylike manner. The fourth bullet had embedded in her shoulder and would be the easiest to get out.

“If Elena hadn’t been with us, we’d have taken him. We’d be full of wooden bullets but one of us would have vervained him,” Damon seethed, finding the third bullet buried in his brother and pulling it out. Stefan yelled as it came free, Damon had been rougher with the last one than the others.

Claire pried out the last bullet, flicked it aside and began struggling to her feet, hand to her abdomen as the wounds began to slowly heal. Wood inflicted injuries tended to take longer to mend than others.

Damon grasped Stefan’s arm and pulled him to his feet. They both barked in pain with the effort. Damon looked at Stefan sorrowfully and shook his head anger creeping to overtake the sadness. They were both bent over weak and pained. Stefan had one hand on the building wall to keep his feet. “We thought of everything, Stefan. Where he was. What he would do. How to get him to come to us. How to go after him. We had the element of surprise. Anything that could have gone wrong we were prepared. We had him and you wouldn’t listen. This could have all been over!”

Stefan glared back with the same anger and grief. “This is my fault? It wouldn’t have mattered, Damon. He still would have taken Elena.”

“Not if she hadn’t been here!” Damon yelled back. He tensed like a spring coiling, desperate to hit something. “Now he’ll kill her. All because you couldn’t man up and keep Elena out of this!”

“Don’t turn this around on me,” Stefan spat. “Do you really think it would have mattered if I had said no?”

“Yes,” Damon bit.

 “Stop it. Both of you. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. Not now,” Claire said shuffling toward the two arguing brothers. They stopped arguing long enough to look at her. “We all blew it,” Claire said with a one-shouldered shrug. It still hurt too much to shrug the injured one.

Stefan swallowed and looked bereft. Damon didn’t seem to be able to decide between blowing up or coming apart. Claire sighed heavily. Something went out of her all at once.

For some reason she couldn’t phantom given the circumstances she felt sympathy for them both and worry for Elena. Despite the fact that Damon might very well love Elena more than her, that she might be about to lose him to another woman all over again, she couldn’t stand to see the expression of sadness on his face. Even if her love wasn’t enough for him, she still loved him more than words could say and she’d do anything to make him happy. He loved Elena, it would hurt him to lose her.

And annoyingly, against her will, she still cared about Elena and Stefan. Even though they kept pushing their self-righteous ‘be a better person’ crap at her and trying to ‘save’ someone who couldn’t and didn’t want to be.

“Alexander won’t kill her. Just like he didn’t kill Damon when he certainly had the opportunity,” Claire said in a monotone. “It’s the same objective as before, he wants it to hurt before we die. Think about it. Get me to turn off my humanity, kill me. Kill Elena in front of him. _Then_ kill Damon. She’s bait. He won’t kill her until he’s got both Damon and me to taunt with it. He’s just changing the playing pieces.”

“You’ve been doing more than choreography for the last eighty years, haven’t you?” Stefan said quietly his already brooding brow getting broodier. Claire didn’t even have the weather all to get irritated that he’d been listening in to yet another of her and Damon’s conversations. It didn’t matter anymore anyway.

“Vampires are always in some sort of trouble. And I know Alexander better than anyone,” Claire said her voice very tired. “Besides, there’s only room for one mentally unstable vampire amongst us and I’ve already filled the position. You two aren’t allowed to lose it.”

Damon blinked rapidly for a beat and looked down at his feet for an instant. “We gotta clean this up. Get back to the house and regroup. You get ‘Hero Hair’ and I’ll get robot boy.”

Claire nodded and moved over to help Stefan with being ambulatory. She wasn’t much better but ‘the walking wounded’, right? She paused as something dreadfully horrible occurred to her. “Alexander won’t kill Elena. But he may turn her. If that’s something that she wouldn’t want…”

It pained her to say it but it was the truth. If it would hurt Damon, if it was something Elena wouldn’t want. Alexander would do it, simply to gouge a little deeper. Plus, then, if he killed her and Damon first, Damon would die knowing Alexander had replaced his previous toy with another woman he loved.  

Stefan looked stricken. “No. Oh my god,” he breathed in horror. Damon shut his eyes a moment and gritted his teeth, his fists clenched. It built like a sudden whirlwind and then, despite his wounds, it struck like one.

“Damn it!” he yelled and punched the brick wall so hard his fist went through it. Claire hobbled toward him as he ran his hands through his hair and paced quickly in a tight circle. “Damn it!” he bit again vehemently.

“Hey,” Claire said, reaching out to touch his arm. He jerked his arm away. Claire seized it again and turned him to face her, then cupped his face in her hands. His expression was still furious and torn. “Listen to me,” she said. “We’ll get her back.”

Damon’s eyes softened and he looked pained.

“Trust me,” Claire said.

Damon’s eyes flickered with a million thoughts, turning the pale blue of them a stormy gray.  There was no way they’d all survive this, she already knew that. Claire wouldn’t let Damon die trying to save either her or Elena. There was one way she could make sure most of them made it out of this alive and Elena was a far better choice than Claire. Claire’s love might not be enough. But she could give Damon enough, even if it wasn’t her. Nothing mattered anymore anyway.

 

***

Damon, still weakened by their run in with Alexander and his crony put his shoulder to the front door of the boarding house and pushed. It creaked open with the keys still dangling from the lock, jingling metallically in the quiet.

He stumbled in, Stefan’s arm around his neck as he supported his floundering brother. Claire staggered in his wake, shutting the door behind them. Damon made his way to the couch and dumped Stefan onto it, who let out a grunt of pain as he collapsed into the cushions. Claire shuffled past Damon to drop down beside him, sagging against the arm of the couch. Damon leaned on the other arm, panting.

“We need blood,” he noted. They were all exhausted and despite his and Claire’s blood drunk earlier the wooden bullets and nifty stake Alexander had brought to the party had negated any benefit it had given. They used up their reserves not dying in the alley. Though it had probably been the only thing to get them all the way home without collapsing completely.

“I dragged Stefan to the car,” Claire muttered, excusing herself from the trek down to the basement freezer to fetch it.

“I dragged him into the house,” Damon countered, doing the same thing. They both looked at Stefan.

“I couldn’t pick up a feather right now,” Stefan excused. Damon groaned and pushed himself off the arm of the couch.

“Fine. I’ll get it. You two just sit there and be waited on,” he groused.

“Okay,” Stefan said. Damon scowled, shuffling off toward the basement. As he did, he saw Stefan sag further into the cushions and Claire go limp, her head lolling back on the couch. Both of them relieved to just sit still for a minute.

It had taken everything they had in them to get Brad Cooper’s body into the trunk of Damon’s car and Stefan into the back seat. They’d made the drive home in utter silence. Damon hated awkward road trips. He hated road trip bonding more but complete silence was nearly as bad.

He paused to look at Claire slumped on the couch, unaware that he was watching her since her eyes were shut. Stefan’s were too. She looked tired, worn, in a way Damon had never seen her. Her carefully pinned up hair was going in all directions, some of it having escaped completely. She was covered in her own blood, the dark red turning her burgundy dress black in places.

How close was Alexander to the truth? Had Claire been slowly losing her humanity one degree at a time? Shutting it off like an ever-decreasing dimmer switch as the bad over took the good until what little good there was left wasn’t enough? Damon felt a pang assail him.

Claire had no idea how deeply her plaintive cry had cut him or the guilt it caused. ‘Is my love not enough?’ It rang in his ears like a criminal accusation. She knew. When had she realized Damon loved Elena too? Was she right? Was Claire’s love not enough? Or was it just that Damon loved them both too much to let either go? To make the choice?  

Those words kept creeping up like a recurring litany. Enough. For now.

Damon’s face pinched with guilt and shame. Never in a million years would he have imagined he’d end up being the Katherine to someone else’s Damon. What could he possibly say to her? Because anything less than confessing that he loved them both would be a lie and to say he loved one more than the other was something he didn’t have an answer for.

She’d pushed him away, hurt and betrayed. The same look in her eyes as the night he’d left her in the alley in 1927. Only to moments later, despite her own pain, reach out and comfort him. Now she seemed calm, even making halfhearted attempts at gallows humor as if it hadn’t happened. But it had. Damon knew it. She knew it.

So how was it she was so calm? How could she promise him they’d get Elena back with such heartfelt conviction when it was Elena who was the thorn in her proverbial side? Damon wasn’t sure even he could do it if the situation was reversed.

He turned away, limping down to the basement to fetch blood bags for Claire and himself.  He grabbed a bottle of animal blood for Stefan.  “Chateau Porky Pig. Finely aged since,” he looked at the label, “last week. Last week was a very good year.”  His mind refused to slow its pace.

With him, he loved Elena but she loved Stefan and because of that he did whatever it took to keep her happy even if that meant extolling his brother over himself. Because Elena loved Stefan and Damon loved Elena and so, whatever Elena wanted he wanted her to have.

But with Claire… there was no other. No secondary love interest she favored over him. If Elena were no longer in the picture…she’d have Damon free and clear. And yet, she was adamant they would get Elena back, even though she knew Damon loved her. Something inside him tugged at the center of his being like a rope being pulled taut at the thought, a warm drawing sensation.

 _‘You would do the same for Elena,’_ his twice-damned conscience reminded him. _‘You have. Sacrificing what you want because what Elena wanted was more important to you.’_

No, Damon didn’t deserve Claire. He couldn’t do that for her.

 _‘Yes, you could,’_ his conscience argued _. ‘You have before. Misled as it was.’_

He knew that not all of them would survive this. Someone would die, at least one of them. Maybe more. He had wanted so desperately to keep both Claire and Elena out of this. But now Elena was Alexander’s hostage and he couldn’t afford to keep Claire out of the fight when they needed the extra fire power. Was fate asking him to make a choice? Sacrifice one to save the other? He couldn’t. There was no way. He couldn’t lose either of them.

Damon pushed it aside. He had to focus right now. He’d do whatever he had to do. He always did. What a Gordian Knot this was. Now if he just had a pair of scissors. Damon shut the freezer and slogged back up the stairs.

Stefan and Claire hadn’t moved. He almost wondered if they’d fallen asleep they were so still but in their condition that wasn’t likely.  He couldn’t have slept with a half healed wound. Damon tossed a blood bag into Claire’s lap. She groaned.

“Blood,” Damon said. Then tossed the bottle into Stefan’s. He groaned with a muttered, ‘ow’ added to the end. “And essence of swine…I think.”

The two showed signs of life, moving sluggishly. Even wounded, Stefan managed to roll his eyes at his brother’s teasing as he sat up to retrieve the bottle. Claire didn’t bother with a glass, she just popped the cap on the bag’s tubing and turned it into a vampire Capri Sun. Damon followed her example as they downed gulps of blood.

He looked down at himself. He was a bloody mess, his shirt sticking to him, the blood congealing and becoming gooey. “I’m going to change,” Damon said between swallows. He already felt better. Blood was a wonderful thing. “Then I’m going to get our witch….and ditch Brad.” Without waiting for a reply he shambled for the stairs. All he got in response was a couple of grunts of acknowledgement.

There’d be more words between them when they weren’t woodshop casualties. But Damon paused on the stairs, leaning heavily against the banister he looked back at his baby brother and the woman he’d loved when he thought he could love no one but Katherine and something tugged again inside him.

***

Claire waited until Damon had gone to collect Bonnie before she ventured down stairs after changing into something more suitable for a rescue mission. If she was going to do this, she had to do it now. While Damon wasn’t present to interrupt or hear. While Stefan was still desperate enough to be malleable.

She felt strangely calm, cut off from the maelstrom of hurt and pain that swirled around her, caught in the eye of the storm but she knew if she tried to reach out and touch that churning hurricane that it would swallow her whole and she’d either die of it or flip the switch to survive it…so she didn’t.

Claire walked down the hall looking for Stefan. He was no longer in the living room where she’d left him and the bottle of animal blood sat barely touched on the side table. She found him in the study, pouring himself a drink.

At first Claire thought it was whiskey and believed it was a decidedly bad idea to have not recouped by drinking the blood Damon had brought him. But then she realized it wasn’t whiskey. It was blood from a blood bag. He filled two glasses without looking up, having long since heard her step.

“Join me for a drink?” he asked holding the tumbler full of blood out to her. Claire’s brow furrowed in confusion but she took the glass, she’d drank only enough to get her mobile before going to change out of her mutilated dress.

“Human blood?” she queried giving him an odd look.

“Yeah, uh,” Stefan said as if he were a little uncomfortable. “I’ve been drinking small amounts from Elena everyday to build up my resistance.”

Maybe Stefan wasn’t quite as sanctimonious as she’d thought. It would give him the same advantages she and Damon had in the fight but he was treating the drinking of human blood like an addiction.

“But Elena’s currently a hostage and Alexander has five hundred years on us, so,” Claire noted finishing the idea, lifting her glass for emphasis. “Bottom’s up then.” They both drank. He too had changed clothes into his usual style of dress.  Claire lowered her glass and looked at him shrewdly.

“You know it’s not an addiction, right?,” she said pointing at his glass. “It’s what you are.”

“Maybe for you,” Stefan said and left it there.  He looked her up and down for a moment, taking in her current ensemble. The mustard yellow open stitched sweater over a white tank, the slim fitting jeans that disappeared into sturdy low-heeled brown riding boots, her still curled hair bound back at the nape of her neck in a simple tail. He seemed to be thinking deeply about something.

“You’re awfully calm all of a sudden,” he observed.

“Would you rather I kill someone else?” Claire countered.

“Does it make you feel better?” Stefan asked.

“To kill?” She said rhetorically and shrugged. “That’s a given. I’m a vampire.”

“To pretend to be a monster,” Stefan said. Claire sighed roughly. She didn’t want another discussion about her feelings. She’d felt her feelings enough to go mad with them. She had other priorities at the moment.

“It’s not pretend.”

Stefan nodded sagely. Claire took back the ‘not sanctimonious’ notion.

He came to stand directly in front of her, glass of blood in hand.

“You really don’t think you can be saved do you? So what? It’s better to reign in hell than serve in heaven?”

“Something like that,” Claire agreed keeping her answer short and vague. It was that more or less, better the predator than the prey, better the monster than the victim. “I’m never going to be what you or Elena want me to be. I can pretend all you like but it won’t make me good. So let’s leave it at that.”

“You say that, yet here you are ready to ride to Elena’s rescue,” Stefan said. “You want to care. But when you do it causes you pain, so you run from it.”

Claire winced and shook her head slightly. “Stefan, I can’t… if I let it in even a little.”

 “You know what you did tonight to that man, was wrong. Our choices define us.”

Claire snorted. “And I made mine,” she said impatiently. “If you’re looking for an apology, you’re wasting your time. I protected Elena.”

“You care about her don’t you? It’s more than the human embodiment of virtue thing isn’t it?” Stefan asked crossing his arms, careful not to spill his glass of blood.

“Stefan,” Claire said warningly. His brow tightened further but he nodded. She took a deep breath.  “Look, I know we’ll probably never be friends but maybe we can at least be allies. Alexander is going to force Damon to choose. Me or Elena.”

“You think he’ll choose Elena over you because he’s in love with her,” Stefan said. “He loves you too. You know he wanted to…”

“Snap my neck and throw me in a lock box until this is all over?” Claire said quickly. The pain from her out cry in the alley was too fresh, too raw.  She wanted to do what she had to do and be done with it. “I know. But he can’t. Not with Elena’s life at stake. And you wouldn’t have let him anyway. I never doubted Damon loves me. But my love isn’t enough and Elena is everything I can never be. Let’s be honest. We both know we’re not all getting out of this alive. And if Damon has his way, it’ll be him who dies because he won’t be able to make the choice. Even if he could it wouldn’t matter. As soon as he did, Alexander would just kill all of us.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Stefan said suspiciously.

“I make the choice for him.”

Stefan’s eyes widened slightly as what she was saying sank in. “You’ve given up,” he realized sadly. “You want to martyr yourself.” He shook his head vehemently. “No. Damon would never allow…”

“What Damon wants and what we should do are two different things. Just like what Elena wanted and what we should have done are two different things. Besides weren’t you the one preaching about people making their own choices and them defining us? Or does that only apply to Elena?”

Stefan scoffed as it dawned on him. “You set me up, you set us both up. That’s why you did that whole dance in the kitchen the other day leaving me and Damon alone. Now, you’re using my own morals against me, going behind Damon’s back. You’ve left me with the option of saving both my brother and Elena or only Elena knowing I’d be desperate to save them both. And Damon said you weren’t manipulative.  That’s very Katherine of you.”

Claire frowned. “Not comforting.”

“It’s a compliment. Sort of.  But why you’re doing it, that’s all you. You’re trying to protect both of them. You never intended to let Damon face Alexander did you?”

“I told you. I will always choose Damon.”

Stefan sighed. “And now that Alexander’s got Elena it’s just made your decision stronger. That’s not the choice of a monster. That’s the decision of someone looking for redemption. Someone who cares.” Stefan said looking at her again with that measuring broody stare. His voice softened. “You really love Damon, don’t you?”

“I do,” Claire said.

“You know Elena doesn’t love him. She cares about him. But not like that,” Stefan said hesitantly.

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Not anymore,” Claire said. “Now, do you want to save your brother and Elena or not?”

Stefan’s brow knotted and he looked down into his glass of blood. In that instant Claire knew she had him.

 

***

“Let go of me!” Elena spat through clenched teeth, struggling uselessly against Alexander’s ice cold grip as he held her wrists together roughly, forcing them into a pair of shackles hanging from the ceiling. The ring that allowed the chain to drop down on either side of it was new and shiny, screwed in with bright bolts but the shackles were old, the iron darkened with age.  There was a second set dangling beside her. Had Claire been bound in these only a few days ago? Was the second set where Claire had watched Vincent burn?

They were in the old Meeting House, on the second floor. Exactly where Damon had said Alexander was hiding. Alexander hadn’t bothered to knock her out to manhandle her. He didn’t have to. The floor was stripped bare, the wood weathered to a brownish gray with age and lack of maintenance. The walls had once been wallpapered, but the design had long since faded into obscurity, peeling away from the wall and hanging like withered leaves. The only light was provided by the dual fireplaces at either end of the room, which blazed brightly with well-fed fires. Beside them sat the familiar red and black shapes of gas cans. In front of the nearest one was a large pile of ash. As if someone had cleaned out the fireplace by scooping all the debris out onto the floor in front of it lazily.

Music was coming from the only piece of furniture in the room, a small table on the other side of the room with a phonograph atop it. It was playing the slightly rasped audio from a record on its turntable, the morning glory shaped horn aimed at the center of the room while a Latino man Elena knew only from the photos the sheriff had given them stood sentry beside it.

Elena recognized the music as ‘Ave Maria’, one of the songs they’d used to play when she’d attend church with her parents or when Elena attended one of the many funerals for the growing list of Mystic Falls fallen. It was so beautiful, the voice singing so liltingly lovely it was jarringly dissonant to the situation. But since it was used for funerals…maybe not.

Alexander laughed at her amused by her demands for release when she was as helpless as a newborn kitten against him. It was a deep throaty sound that rumbled out of his chest. “You’re a feisty one,” he said lightly as he snapped the shackles shut with a clink. Elena felt the cold iron envelop her wrists completely, holding her more securely than even handcuffs would. The chain gave her enough leeway to stand flat-footed, they put no strain on her arms but she couldn’t get away.

She still struggled angrily, but every time she did her body rubbed against Alexander and the thought made her sick. He probably liked it.

“What do you want with me?” Elena asked a little confused. Why take her? She was Stefan’s girlfriend not Damon’s. She was desperately worried about the others. The last look she’d had, had been of them all disabled and bleeding on the ground. But they had only been wounded. They would recoup and come for her. She knew they would.

Alexander stepped back and smiled. If she didn’t know he was a monster it would have been a very charming smile, his neat strong teeth white in the firelight. “Your company. For now.” He reached out a hand and trailed it along her jaw, looking her over with awe and shaking his head gently. Elena jerked her head away from his touch.

“My god but you do look like her,” he whispered. “I knew you were her doppelganger but it’s still quite shocking to see the resemblance in person.”

“I’m not Katherine,” Elena spat. Alexander tilted his head, gray-blue eyes narrowing.

“No. You’re not,” he said.  He swallowed as if remembering something that saddened him, though Elena couldn’t imagine Alexander sad, only insane.

“She gave her to me, you know,” he said. Elena blinked.

“Katherine? She gave you who? Claire?”

“I wanted Katherine but she was spoken for. Claire was her gift to me,” Alexander said in that distant voice people get when they are remembering something from long ago, wistful and melancholy.

“Oh my god,” Elena whispered horrified. Katherine had set Alexander on Claire? Given her to him like a birthday present?  Alexander had wanted Katherine. Why did that not surprise Elena? Katherine loved to play games, make someone fall in love with her and do her bidding. Or toy with them because it suited her as she had done to Damon.

“Why would she do that?” she breathed. Katherine didn’t ‘gift’ people from the goodness of her black little heart. She always had an ulterior motive. What could she possibly have had in mind by ‘giving’ Claire to Alexander?

“Because Claire was everything Katherine could never be for me,” Alexander said. “That’s Claire’s voice on the record. Beautiful isn’t it? The voice of an angel.” Then, to Elena’s utter revulsion  and before she could absorb that the voice floating through the room belonged to Claire, he started recounting the tale as if he were reciting it for a dear friend.

 

***

 

_Columbus, Georgia 1905_

_Broad Street was alive with lazy activity in the late spring heat. To the west, only a couple of blocks away, the sound of riverboats could be heard from the Chattahoochee River that marked the boundary between Georgia and Alabama, busy drifting on the swift waters with their cargo from the factories inside and the plantations surrounding, the city. Some were northbound for Atlanta, others southbound for the Apalachicola River to the Gulf of Mexico and ultimately to New Orleans. To the east, the whistle of trains echoed eerily into the night. Steam engines declaring their intent to make way from the depot Alexander had come into town through only a few days ago. Long threads of train cars bound for New York or a multitude of others locales with commercial products and eager passengers._

_Columbus was a nexus of commerce and trade and as such never really slept, though it did drowse in the evening hours, its streets becoming less populated but never empty. There were always a few brave souls out in the darkest hours, some rushing to jobs at the pier warehouses or early positions at the factories, others slipping off for illicit liaisons with secret lovers or carousing with friends at the saloon._

_The people on the street moved like molasses, no one wanted to move at more than a languid stroll, it was too hot. Despite the evening hour, the temperature was still very warm, the air humid and cloying with the thick scent of magnolias and wisteria. Horse drawn wagons and carriages predominated the street, though more and more of the new automobiles trundled along amid the clip-clop of hooves. Alexander didn’t understand the appeal. He’d take a good piece of horseflesh over four wheels attached to what amounted to a metal box any day._

_“Oh, these will be perfect,” said the beauty on his arm, tugging him toward a stall on the sidewalk, the dowdy woman running it was closing up for the night.  Flowers in every type, color and possible arrangement stood on the little two-wheeled cart._

_“Katherine,” Alexander insisted with exasperation._

_“Hush. You must have something as pretty as her if you mean to introduce yourself,” Katherine said chidingly though her voice was sweet as a bell and her dark mass of curls bounced around her shoulders jovially, contrasting to the gold on gold of her taffeta and silk gown._

_It was quite ornate for something as simple as an evening stroll but Katherine was not one to skimp on aesthetics even for that. The neckline was scandalously low, her slim shoulders exposed to the balmy air, her bosom heaving beneath a sheath of chiffon that peeked from the taffeta bodice. Feathers sprung artfully from her cascading ringlets, appliqué and intricate embroidery accentuated the hem of her gown, calling attention to her dainty slippered feet beneath, a lapis lazuli cameo sat in the hollow of her throat setting off her graceful swanlike neck._

_“I can’t,” Alexander insisted desperately. He didn’t want to do this. Katherine just wouldn’t listen to him. But what Katherine wanted, Katherine got. He’d learned it was pointless to resist._

_“Nonsense,” Katherine said, her eyes on the flowers as she picked over them with a shrewd eye. “You can’t woo a lady without flowers.” The stall keeper had stopped letting down the canvas curtains to close the stall off for the night. Waiting eagerly for one last sale._

_Katherine reached out a bare arm, her dress possessing only a filmy drapery for a sleeve, and plucked a bouquet of spring roses of deep red from the arrangements. “These I think,” she said as much to him as to herself._

_The shopkeeper smiled brightly. “Excellent choice, Miss,” the woman said. Of course, she was thrilled with the selection. A dozen perfect red roses. They were the most expensive thing on the cart._

_Katherine caught the woman’s eye and her voice lowered slightly to a velvety thrum. “You’ll give us these.”_

_The shopkeeper blinked in confusion. “You can have them,” she said and smiled dazedly. As if she didn’t know why she was giving away her most expensive item to a perfect stranger._

_“Thank you,” Katherine said politely. She thrust the flowers at Alexander and he took them with a deep sigh as she pulled them down the sidewalk again. He stopped her, pulling her to his breast._

_“I’d rather have you,” he insisted. Katherine looked up at him with her doe eyes and frowned. She was beautiful even when she had such a sad expression on her face. She reached up a small hand and caressed his cheek._

_“Dear, sweet Alexander,” she said wistfully. “You know my heart is spoken for. I’m not for you. Perhaps if we had met first…”_

_“Yes, I know,” Alexander said with irritation. “This mysterious Virginian you keep telling me about, the one whose brother tried to steal you from him. Yet you won’t even tell me his name.”_

_“Would that I could, Alexander,” Katherine said. “You know how dangerous it is for me. I dare not speak his name. What if someone heard? They’d kill him.”_

_Alexander’s shoulders slumped a bit. “I hope he appreciates what you do for him.”_

_His lovely Katherine. Hunted and pursued, unable to be with the man she loved because those who sought to kill her would take anything she loved from her first to cause her pain. She never would speak of who wished her dead or why. Only that someone one did and that until she was free of them she could not be with the one she loved._

_It had been her melancholy tale that had made Alexander fall in love with her himself. It was the epitome of what he desired. Someone to love him completely until the end of time and yet, he’d never been able to find it. They always ran away and then he had to kill them, because he wouldn’t suffer what was his to belong to someone else. He couldn’t imagine why Katherine’s beloved had not killed his brother for daring to try to take her from him. It was that alone that kept him from making Katherine his. She belonged to another before she had met him. He greatly respected her devotion to her absent love. Why couldn’t he have met her first?_

_“I know he would if he knew. Besides, Alexander. I’m not what you want. I’m jaded and selfish. My innocence has long since fled. I shall forever live like a gypsy until I am free. You deserve better than that,” she said her voice still bitterly sad. Then to add some levity to the conversation, she teased, “And I cannot sing a note! With your love of the opera you should have a love that can sing like a nightingale. Are you not smitten with her? After last night I thought surely she’d stolen your heart away the moment you saw her.”_

_Alexander felt himself blush. “I am,” he admitted. Katherine had insisted upon taking him to see ‘the girl of his dreams’. She’d even bade him come with all haste to Georgia to see the girl, returning most unexpectedly from her latest adventure to collect him._

_Katherine had not misspoke. Claire Dominic was a ravishing beauty with her raven hair and dark eyes and he’d never heard a voice so beautiful. She’d stolen his breath away as he and Katherine had watched from a private box at the illustrious Springer Theater. Alexander had instantly wanted her._

_“Then let me do this for you, Alexander,” Katherine pleaded, her amber eyes fiercely adamant as she caressed his cheek again. “If I cannot give you my heart, let me give you her. She’s my gift to you. Love her as you would love me and I shall never regret that I could not be what you wished me to be.”_

_Alexander’s brow furrowed and he shook his head a little. “She will never be you. But if it will make you happy I will accept your gift with great joy.”_

_Katherine’s eyes glistened as tears welled in them, she smiled bitter sweetly. “Thank you Alexander.”_

_Laughter sounded down the sidewalk behind them and Katherine hastily blinked the tears away as Alexander looked toward the sound. Three figures had just stepped out onto the sidewalk, laughing and talking from one of the restaurants. A man with a woman on each arm. Claire and her parents just coming from dinner._

_“Here they come,” Katherine said and quickly dragged Alexander behind the corner of the nearest building. Together they peered around to the sidewalk, turning their ears to the conversation between Claire and her parents._

_Alexander was enraptured all over again at the sight of Claire. She was the same height as Katherine with the same olive skin, though her figure was a little more voluptuous. Where Katherine wore her chocolate tresses in curls Claire’s was pulled up in a loose chignon beneath a short back hat adorned with feathers and ribbons, hiding her lovely black waves._

_Unlike Katherine, her dinner dress was modest without being puritanical, pink and cream satin and tulle clinging to her figure without revealing too much. Glass beads and gilded thread caught the light of the street lamps as the dress’s material floated around her like gossamer gauze. A young Gibson Girl in the flesh. It was light and airy, fresh and young, reflecting the light and innocence she exuded like a beacon in the dark. She was the playful teasing innocent to Katherine’s charming seductress. And yet, something in her demeanor reminded Alexander of Katherine._

_Had Katherine seen it too and picked her because of it? Giving him the closest approximation of herself she could find? His heart clenched at the thought. Katherine could be so selfless and endearing when she chose._

_Claire walked on her father’s arm. He was a tall man in his mid-forties, with hair as black as his daughter’s that swept back in a side part from a sharp widow’s peak and eyes that were the color of sepia. He looked very distinguished in his sack suit of dark blue serge and his homburg hat in his hand to let his scalp breathe in the heat. Katherine had said his name was Richard._

_To his other side walked Claire’s mother, Eva. From her, Claire got her wavy hair, though now it was pulled up primly beneath her velvetta hat in much more polished fashion than her daughter’s. about the same age as her husband though time had been more than kind to her, she wore a dress of blue rose printed chiffon and lace that buttoned all the way to her chin in proper Edwardian style, her eyes a golden brown to compliment her dark brown hair. They were a very beautiful family and that Claire was such an exquisite creature came as no surprise seeing her parents._

_“Shall I fetch us a cab?” Richard asked, his Georgia accent heavy but tempered by higher learning._

_“Why don’t we walk for a bit first, Papa?” Claire suggested. “It will do you good to get fresh air as much as you stay cooped up in your offices at the factory or the study at home. You should get out more.”_

_“I get out,” Richard protested playfully. “I go to every performance at the Springer.”_

_Claire gave him a put upon look. He smiled. “As you wish my dear,” Richard said immediately acquiescing to his daughter’s desires. “Though you’re the one with the love of picnics in fields of flowers on bright sunny days not me.”_

_“I suppose it’s a good thing we’re not in a field and that it’s not sunny then isn’t it?” Claire teased her father. He laughed. It was a rich easy sound. The laugh of a happy man who was pleased with his lot in life._

_“Dinner was lovely, Richard,” Eva said to her husband as they strolled toward Alexander and Katherine’s hiding spot._

_“It was wasn’t it?” Richard said. “The ribs were excellent. We must have dinner with the Reece’s more often, wouldn’t you say dear?” He turned his attention his daughter._

_“It was lovely Papa,” she said, her voice lilting and pretty even when she spoke._

_“Mr. Reece’s son is quite a nice young man. He seemed positively taken with you at dinner. He quite loved your performance last night at the theater,” Richard suggested lightly. All the easy lightness went out of Claire like a popped balloon. She sighed heavily and rolled her eyes._

_“Not this again,” she decried. “Christopher would be taken with any woman who paid him the least bit of kindness. He didn’t even know what I was singing.”_

_Alexander knew. She’d sung a rendition of ‘Habanera’ from ‘Carmen’ to break a man’s heart. Every word in perfect French that had made Alexander feel like weeping. French-born, he had not heard such a beautiful rendition of the song in his very long life. It was that voice that had people from across the country coming to hear her sing. It was a shame she was hidden away in this little corner of the world. She should be singing at the Met in New York or the Palais Garnier in Paris._

_“He’s a strapping fellow, Claire and his family is well respected,” Eva said._

_“Strapping is a nice euphemism for ‘eats too many biscuits’. His family is well-respected and owns a large cotton plantation south of the city. I know. So?” Claire protested._

_“Claire!” Eva rebuked her daughter’s insult._

_“She’s got the fire,” Katherine whispered behind Alexander. “I knew she would. Runs in the blood.”_

_Alexander smiled faintly. He didn’t quite get what Katherine was whispering about but Claire did have fire. He appreciated a woman who knew her mind. One who wasn’t a simpering simpleton with no spirit or aspirations, fit only to produce more simpleton children for an equally simpleton husband. A woman like Katherine. Claire seemed to share her opinionated nature._

_“So, sweetheart, you are a woman grown. You’re twenty four now. You should be thinking of settling down, having a family of your own,” Richard admonished gently._

_“With him?” Claire said incredulous. “Christopher wouldn’t know the right end of a Shakespearean sonnet if it bit him. His idea of music is a banjo and someone with a washboard. His greatest goal in life is to manage his father’s plantation and have a herd of children to do the same for him. He’s dull as dishwater.”_

_“If not with him, with someone,” Eva insisted. “You can’t expect everyone to be as educated as you. We’ve allowed you more freedom than most parents do, spoiled you because you’re our only child. Your father and I were married when I was nineteen. Would it be so terrible to marry someone we picked?”_

_“Yes!” Claire argued as they walked. “I don’t want to marry someone because I’m told to or because it’s a solid business alliance. I want to marry for love. I want adventure and passion. Maybe even a little danger. I want to marry someone I love so much it consumes me and I can think of no one else. He’ll be handsome and dashing, cultured and daring. Someone who understands me. Not a provincial bumpkin like Christopher Reece.”_

_“If you wanted ‘cultured and exotic’ you could have had your pick of one of your fellow singers. You have men, begging to court you on a daily basis Claire and yet you aren’t interested in any of them. How many times has one asked your father for permission to court you and they do only for you to decide in the end they aren’t for you?” Eva rebuked._

_“They don’t understand me either. None of them make my heart race or set my soul on fire. They smile and tolerate my ‘wild ways’ and then frown when I’m not looking. I do not love them,” Claire insisted fervently as if she could get her parents to understand if she only kept repeating herself._

_Alexander frowned to himself. Could they not see they would waste her talents on such a thing? That she was meant for more than a simple marriage? That what she desired was the highest thing a person could aspire to have? He could give her all those things, he thought. She’d want for nothing. Oh, Katherine had outdone herself in finding Claire._

_“We’ve given you time for that, dear. And had it happened, your mother and I would have been more than happy to give the union our blessing. But it’s time to put away childish fantasies and grow up, Claire. Shall we be without grandchildren forever?” Richard said his voice growing serious. “You’re singing will not provide for you forever, you’re at the pinnacle of your career now. You know this. You must think of the future. Who will take care of you when we are gone?”_

_Claire sighed. “What if I don’t want children? I have enough saved to live on for years. Perhaps I’ll establish my own Opera company in Chicago or some other city and teach the next generation. I can take care of myself, Papa. I don’t want to marry anyone I do not love! Who doesn’t understand me. None of them ever do. They want me to be a proper wife and mother, to forget everything I love in favor of a dreary life of sewing and children. That’s not who I am.”_

_“With the right husband you would be happy to be a wife and mother,” Eva insisted. “You’re father and I didn’t know each other before we were betrothed and I couldn’t love anyone more.”_

_“Your Mother is right, Claire. I was certain I’d hate her when my father sent me up to Virginia to meet Eva. You were born there, you were too little to remember. Yet my father knew that he had provided his son with a dutiful wife. I was just too foolish and young to listen at the time. But when I met her, I knew I would love her,” Richard said looking lovingly at his wife who beamed back at him. “You know your mother has no siblings; her father died in General Groom’s army when she was but an infant and your grandmother had no more children. Shall the Markova line end with you? You have a duty to your family. Just because the marriage is arranged doesn’t mean you will not love your husband, you may well learn to.”_

_“Learn to?” Claire said askance. “And if I don’t? Shall I be condemned to be unhappy forever? To abandon all I desire just because I’m duty bound to have children? I know the man for me is out there somewhere Papa. I just haven’t found him yet. And I think I would want children with that man but I do not want to bear children for a man I do not love.  What would be the point? What is greater than love? Why do anything if it’s not for love?”_

_Alexander thought he might burst from his hiding spot and snatch Claire from her parent’s arms right that moment. Only Katherine’s cool hand on his elbow kept him from descending on them in a fit of righteous indignation. They loved Claire but they didn’t deserve her. He did. He’d make her like him, like Katherine. They’d hunt alongside each other forever and he’d never desire her to abandon her singing. He’d encourage it. Nay, he’d require it, every day. She’d be young forever and love him as Katherine could not for all that he’d given her. He’d show her things she’d only ever dreamed of._

_“See?” Katherine whispered in Alexander’s ear as they listened. “She’s perfect. They don’t understand her. But you do. You understand love. And didn’t you say yourself that her voice will begin to fade and falter soon? It would be such a shame for the world to lose such a thing of beauty. They will crush her spirit and marry her off to some pompous fool who will keep her with child for the rest of her life in the name of duty and familial responsibility. Take her away. Make her yours. Save her from the fate they would subject her to. Give her the love she so desires.”_

_“You were right, Katherine,” Alexander breathed. “Thank you.”_

_Katherine laughed happily. “I’m so glad. Now go,” she said shooing him. “Introduce yourself. Don’t take her yet. Make them think you’re the perfect match. Show Claire that what she dreams of can come true and that his name is Alexander. Charm her, woo her, bring her to you, make her love you.”_

_Alexander smiled broadly at her and his heart swelled with love for all that Katherine had given him. Katherine smiled back at him coy and curtsied, one eyebrow lifting slyly. Alexander turned to follow the Dominics as they passed by his and Katherine’s hiding place without a backward glance. They paused and Richard placed his hands on his daughter’s shoulders with a sigh._

_“Let us not speak of this anymore tonight,” he said. He smiled at Claire. “My stubborn, willful child. What am I going to do with you? I would not see you unhappy. You know that. If you do not wish to marry Christopher I will not bring it up again. The Lord will provide. We will leave it in his hands.”_

_Claire looked like someone had taken a great weight off her shoulders and Eva looked on tolerantly at her husband and daughter as Alexander smoothed his suit and made sure his tie was neat. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and strode purposefully toward them and Richard caught his movement, dropping his hands from his daughter’s shoulders. Alexander stopped before them and smiled dashingly._

_“Pardon my rudeness but I couldn’t help myself,” he excused politely. He bowed slightly and was delighted when Claire cast her father an amused glance. “I simply must introduce myself to Miss Dominic, the angel I heard sing last night,” he said. Claire laughed lightly at the compliment._

_“A token of my appreciation.” He held out the bouquet of roses toward Claire who tilted her head politely with a bright smile as she took them, holding them to her nose to smell their sweet scent._

_“They’re lovely, thank you. I love roses,” Claire said. “I’m glad you enjoyed my performance.”_

_“I am Alexander Favre,” he said careful to speak his name to Richard first._

_Richard offered Alexander his hand and Alexander shook it firmly. “Pleased to make your acquaintance Mr. Favre.” He saw Richard measuring him with his eyes. Weighing the worth of his clothing, which was of the finest fabrics available, and the way he behaved for a clue to his station in life. He seemed to like what he saw. “My daughter has many admirers of her work. It’s always a pleasure to hear from them.”_

_“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Dominic. I see where your daughter gets her beauty,” Alexander complemented, canting his head toward Eva. She colored prettily in the proper fashion._

_“You are too kind Mr. Favre,” Eva said._

_“Certainly not, it is not kindness to speak the truth. It is a man’s solemn duty,” Alexander said and Eva turned pinker. He turned back to Claire, who had placed the bouquet in the crook of her arm and took her hand, raising it to his lips for a chaste kiss on the back._

_“Votre interprétation de ‘Habanera’ était exquise. Je n'ai pas entendu parler comme dans ma vie. Merci d'avoir fait une telle chose ordinaire l'honneur de découvrant votre beau talent,” he said in French as he raised his head from her hand, certain she would understand from the many operas she sang in different languages. Loosely translated it meant, ‘Your rendition of 'Habanera' was exquisite. I've not heard the like in my lifetime. Thank you for doing such a plain thing the honor of baring your lovely talent.’ She turned pink as her dress and her eyes went wide._

_“Vous parlez français magnifiquement (You speak French beautifully),” she said with surprise. “Merci Monsieur Favre, si je suis certain que vous exagérez. (Thank you Mr. Favre, though I am certain you are exaggerating).”_

_“I should hope so. I was born in France. And I assure you I never exaggerate,” Alexander said._

_“Then I humbly stand corrected,” Claire said. He could hear her heart beat, steady and smooth as she played the game all men and women played. The sound of it made his jaw ache and his fangs pulse beneath his gums. What would she taste like? He could feel Katherine’s eyes on them from her hiding place, watching avidly._

_“France? Surely you didn’t travel all this way just to hear Claire sing?” Eva asked._

_“But of course. A friend told me of her and I simply had to hear her for myself,” Alexander said. Eva looked taken aback by the concept that someone would travel halfway around the word to hear anyone sing. He hadn’t. Katherine had collected him from Charleston where he was passing his time eating half the city and compelling them for his amusement. Alexander had not been in France in over fifty years._

_“I’m something of a patron of the arts in my spare time. I would be remiss if I did not explore all it had to offer. And one must live life to its fullest as well as work. Otherwise what is the point?” he explained. Richard’s interest peaked immediately and Alexander smiled inwardly. Claire smiled to herself charmed by his comment he was sure._

_“And what do you do Mr. Favre?”_

_Katherine had said that Claire’s father owned a textile factory that specialized primarily in cotton. Thus his interest in the Reece family based on the conversation between Claire and her parents they had overheard. Katherine had been very thorough in her research of Claire’s family  it seemed. It made his ploy much easier to conduct. He must remember to thank her later._

_“Textiles Mr. Dominic. I trade in silks and Indian cotton,” he lied._

_“What a coincidence,” Richard said enthusiastically and Alexander could see the wheels in his head turning already. “I own a textile company myself. Perhaps we could discuss the trials and tribulations of our business over brandy and cigars sometime.”_

_“That would be delightful Mr. Dominic. I look forward to it,” Alexander said._

_“Where are you staying while you are in our fair city?” Eva asked, catching on to her husband’s thinking. The Lord will provide indeed._

_“The hotel at the Springer of course,” he said as if he couldn’t be tempted to stay in one of the lesser boarding houses._

_“A fine establishment,” Richard said. Claire had gone quiet at her father’s side._

_“Yes it is. But it is late and I have kept you far too long,” Alexander said. He’d set the ground work. It was time to let it simmer. “Please feel free to call on me anytime you like. Room 102. Until then I am certain I shall see you at the theater. I couldn’t bear to miss a performance by Miss Dominic.”_

_“Certainly, Mr. Favre. Until then,” Richard said his eyes sparkling with what he thought was a marvelous stroke of luck._

_“Until then, Mr. Dominic” Alexander agreed. He bowed again, first to Eva and then Claire, letting his eyes catch hers. They were such a lovely mahogany. She curtsied back primly. “Mrs. Dominic, Miss Dominic.”_

_“Mr. Favre,” Eva said politely._

_“Goodnight,” he bade them and walked away. Behind them, when he should have been out of hearing distance he heard them speak of him._

_“He was quite the gentleman,” Richard observed._

_“Indeed,” Eva agreed the note in her voice obviously pleased._

_“Mr. Favre was a perfect gentleman,” Claire said. But Alexander was so pleased with himself he didn’t hear the way her voice fell flat and uninterested. Only politely amused as any performer would be with a mannerly admirer of their work._

_Katherine grabbed him, pulling him back into the shadows by their hiding spot. “Well done,” she complimented. “Did you compel them?”_

_Alexander blinked at her and shook his head. “No. Why would I?”_

_Katherine gawked at him, her little bow of a mouth open in disbelief. “Because it makes it easier? Because we’re vampires and we take what we want?”_

_“But then it wouldn’t be real,” Alexander insisted. “If I am to love her as I love you I want it to be real.”_

_Katherine sighed and rolled her eyes in exasperation but then she smiled sweetly. “Oh Alexander. You romantic idiot. Always doing things the hard way.”_

_Alexander frowned slightly insulted. “I compelled the others,” he said referencing the other women he’d tried to make love him. “They always ran away.”_

_“As you like,” Katherine assented. “However you do it I know you will make her yours.”_

_“Yes. I will,” Alexander promised, looking back. Claire and her parents were on the move again, strolling down the sidewalk and laughing again frivolously. He watched the way Claire smiled lovingly at her parents despite their argument, the adoring way her father held her on his arm and felt a welter of supreme jealousy swell in his breast.. He wanted that. He deserved it, they didn’t.  Alexander would make her his and never let her go._

_***_

_Days stretched into weeks and Alexander dutifully spent his time wooing the fair Claire. He sent her flowers at every performance, went out of his way to meet her afterward when she would stroll the streets with her parents or during the myriad of after performance galas with the many patrons of the theater.  But Claire played properly coy, never being more than charmingly polite as a young lady should be, as she was to everyone she met. A delightful mix of innocence and unconscious sensual allure, careful never to favor him over anyone else lest she appear to be showing her true feelings._

_He regaled her with tales of his travels and the wondrous sights he’d seen. Tried to win her admiration with stories of his wild exploits. She always commented kindly and showed an appropriate amount of interest in them but she never seemed to quite exhibit the enthralled rapture he so desired._

_Wasn’t it everything Claire wanted? Alexander attributed it to the fact that he never could get her alone. He couldn’t sneak her away for a quick passionate kiss and she allowed him to touch her only in the most chaste way. As a brother to a sister. It mystified him. He thought she felt awkward under her parent’s constant gaze intent on protecting their daughter’s purity he supposed. But Claire was a modern woman in every sense of the word. He knew if he could only get her alone she’d be ecstatic with joy._

_He began to resent the men who fawned over her and the laughing, teasing way she seemed to adore it. They wanted her, as he did, and she seemed oblivious. He started to become agitated that he couldn’t watch her during day light hours and begged Katherine to do it for him, at which she’d laughed, patting him on the head like a child and telling him that she was certain it wasn’t needed. Didn’t Claire listen anytime he was near, she would tell him. She was only being a well-mannered Lady. Her parents never left her alone with any of the men, it was nothing to be worried about but if he was so concerned why did he not simply take her? Because he wanted it to be real, he insisted. Katherine would sigh and kiss his cheek before leaving him to his thoughts._

_The city began to suffer a bout of strange flux, it’s victims falling prey to mysterious animal bites that induced a short lived malaise the doctors couldn’t explain. Some of them mysteriously died of it, among them some of Claire’s more ardent admirers, Christopher Reece dying quite tragically of it one evening after having snuck away from his father’s guardianship to meet up with his friends for an illicit poker game. Whispers began circulating about demons and vampires haunting Columbus but those with any education at all scoffed at the silly gossip. And with each meeting Alexander became more and more enamored of Claire and her voice to the point of utter obsession._

_His first thought upon waking was of her and his last before he slept. He could hear her voice singing in his head long after the performance had ended. He’d ask Claire to sing for them as they strolled along the streets but she’d always shyly decline. Alexander found the hidden bashful streak endearing but it vexed him at the same time. Why would she not sing for him when he was her greatest admirer?_

_Her parents proved harder to win over than he had thought without compulsion. They seemed quite taken with him and on several occasions Alexander spent an evening over brandy and cigars at the gentleman’s club discussing his nonexistent textile company with Richard. Claire’s father was very much interested in possibly acquiring some of the silk and Indian cotton it didn’t produce. But they’d yet to take it further than polite acquaintance and business. Alexander was patient however._

_By the time summer came he was as in love with Claire as he had ever been with Katherine, who had been suddenly called away to attend some crisis or other. She had left only when he had promised to claim Claire soon, desperate to give him in Claire what she herself could not though she was always exasperated that he didn’t just compel them all into what he wanted. But Alexander stood by his convictions. He wanted it to be real._

_He had often insisted that Katherine should introduce herself to Claire. That he thought Claire would quite enjoy knowing another woman as spirited and free as she was but Katherine had humbly and sadly insisted she was not worthy adding that it might give Claire the impression that he was already spoken for. Besides he was having a hard enough time winning Claire’s heart without a perceived rival paramour in the picture. So Alexander had not argued. He had become so frustrated that he was seriously considering compelling Claire’s parents into a marriage proposal and then the thing he had been waiting for happened. Mr. and Mrs. Dominic invited him to dinner._

_Alexander had turned up on the doorstep of their 264 acre home in his finest attire for the event. The Greek Revival style house rose before him and he stepped between the white columns with great anticipation. When Mrs. Dominic had answered the bell and invited him in he had crossed the threshold with a sense of fortune. Tonight would be the night, he knew it._

_Dinner was a private affair, only he and the Dominics and had progressed with mannerly pleasantness with Richard and Alexander doing most of the talking and Claire or Eva chiming in when it was appropriate. Claire was very demure about the whole thing and Alexander began to lament that she was so chaste with him. He knew she must adore him as he adored her but she refused to let on._

_Richard had been prattling on about cotton, plantations and all that he thought Alexander’s company could provide for him, hinting at the idea of a merger, for the better part of an hour. Claire, seated next to him had covertly stifled a few yawns at the dry dullness of the conversation.  Then as the main course was taken away and dessert—pecan pie, Claire’s favorite—was served by the staff, Claire had made him absolutely giddy with joy._

_“Take me away from all this. On one of your grand adventures perhaps? Because if I hear another word about cotton or silk I shall simply die of boredom. London maybe? Certainly it must have something more appealing than cotton to talk about,” she said it in the tone of a jest, a joke between friends to break the tediousness of a boring dinner conversation._

_Alexander had beamed at her and leaned close, “Paris is far more beautiful. You could sing at the Palais Garnier and walk the halls of the Louvre”_

_“Will I have to listen to talk about cotton or silk?” Claire asked._

_“Only if you so desire,” Alexander promised him._

_“Sounds perfect,” Claire had said laughing. Alexander had sipped his wine and made himself not sweep her up in his arms that very instant and run away with her. He would wait until later in the night, after dinner when everyone was asleep and steal up to her bedroom. He’d take her away like a prince in a fairytale and make the world anew for her._

_Dinner concluded with all the politeness of Southern hospitality and Alexander left without much adieu saying only that he was very grateful for their generosity and that he would be seeing Claire again soon. Claire had bid him goodnight with a smile and Richard had insisted that they must discuss something important the next day before shutting the door. Then Alexander had sprinted from the property. He had work to do._

_***_

_His arrangements took the better part of the night he had so much to attend to._

_He compelled a bottle of chloroform from the apothecary. He would not compel Claire, compulsion rendered the entire thing an illusion, but he’d done this before and the women were always frightened at first. He didn’t want her to be frightened._

_Then he compelled two young women from the pier, poor girls who were out on their own far too late for a lady, scrounging for scraps to supplement their larders. He took them to the outskirts of town to an old abandoned plantation house that had been left to rot after the Civil War, the owner quite probably dead in the conflict. He commanded them to stay there and they obeyed like good beasts. Claire would need blood, he wouldn’t have her forced to wait on it or hunt it down herself on her first night as a vampire._

_He even compelled himself a horse from the night groom at the livery stable to take her away on. A great white creature with an arching neck and a thick mane. It was a real life fairytale._

_Then, in the wee hours when only the frogs and the cicadas called in the summer humidity and then only sleepily, Alexander had returned to the Dominic Estate. Mosquitoes buzzed around his head intent on making a meal of him if he’d stand still long enough as he made his stealthy way around the huge house to the back side, where he knew Claire’s bedroom awaited him on the top floor. His horse waited docilely, tied to a tree at the edge of the woods that bordered the estate._

_He stood on the carefully manicured lawn and looked up at her window. It was dark, his fair maiden surely asleep. Alexander trembled with anticipation, he could barely believe it was happening. Finally after so many weeks. Katherine had been right, Claire had come to him at last. She would be so pleased when she returned to find Claire at his side and one of them._

_With a leap, Alexander sprang with hardly any effort from the ground to the balcony of Claire’s bedroom, landing as quietly as a cat. Quietly Alexander stole to the window and slipped inside, the flimsy lock on the doors breaking with the press of a finger. He’d been invited in, he could come and go as he pleased now._

_Alexander stopped and took in the room. It was completely dark but his vampire vision let him see it as if it were midday. It was decorated in Colonial style, done in cream, mint green and lavender. A girl’s room not a woman’s. She deserved a room done in satin and velvet. A room for a woman not a girl as her parent’s seemed to think of her. Alexander would see she got it._

_The hardwood floor beneath his feet was polished to a glossy shine, protected by a large rug. There was a small vanity in one corner cluttered with Claire’s beauty products and hairbrushes. The white mantled fireplace directly across from the balcony was empty, cleaned and waiting for winter to come again. A crucifix hung above it and a padded bench heaped with plush pillows was sat in the hollow beside it. A perfect place to lounge in the fire’s warmth on a cold night and read._

_A chair was wedged into another corner next to a small bookcase. A curtain obscured the closet and dressing area from the main part of the room. Portraits hung on the wall, one of them a photograph in sepia of Claire as a little girl, held on her mother’s lap, her father protectively hovering behind them. She looked precious in a little white bonnet._

_An antique pitcher and basin sat next to the bed that was more for decoration than actual use since indoor plumbing had become all the rage.  At the foot of it sat a hope chest, the box into which a young woman put all the linens and bits of embroidery she made or acquired for her future marriage, a tradition that had taken the place of a dowry. But she wouldn’t need that anymore. Alexander would make sure that she had anything her heart desired._

_Claire was soundly asleep ensconced in that big colonial bed with a canopy of fabric printed with a wisteria motif to coordinate with the rest of the room, her long black hair pulled back in a braid at the nape of her neck. She looked so innocent with her dark lashes feathered against her cheek that it took Alexander’s breath away._

_He padded to the bed and silently withdrew the bottle of chloroform from his jacket, saturating a cloth with it. The scent filled the air quickly and Claire stirred, her nose wrinkling distasteful at the sickly sweet smell. She turned over to face him, pushing the covers from her shoulders to reveal her lace and cotton nightdress, such a girlish thing to be wearing. Alexander thought it wholly appropriate. Like a virgin on her wedding night. Was Claire a virgin? He’d never bothered to wonder about it._

_He thrilled at the concept that she might be. She certainly never seemed to wander away with the men who wished to court her. She never had with him. What a night! Alexander’s heart thudded rapidly in his chest as he sat down on the bed’s edge. He dared to touch her flawless skin, his fingertips brushing over her collarbone lighter than a feather. She turned her head, batting at his hand in sleep and exposing her long slim throat._

_Alexander sucked in a quick breath. His eyes riveted to the thrash of her throat, the pulse of her jugular that shone pale blue beneath her skin. He wanted to taste her, just once before he gave her a new life. He reached out to touch her throat and she woke._

_She blinked groggily. “Alexander?” she asked as if in a dream, for the first time speaking his given name rather than the more formal Mr. Favre. It made his heart sing with happiness. She’d called him by his first name._

_Then she realized she wasn’t dreaming and went to scream. Alarmed Alexander quickly clamped the cloth over her mouth to quiet her. He hadn’t meant to frighten her. She flailed against him, fighting the effects of the chloroform even as her eyes started to flutter shut again. The temptation was too much. His predatory instincts overwhelmed him, his eyes flushing blood-red. As the chloroform sent her into a deep slumber, Alexander gave in sinking his fangs into her delicate throat and drank._

_He took only a small drink, savoring the heady honeyed taste of her blood on his tongue, invading his senses. He’d waited so long he desperately wanted to drink more but he could not. He dared not. He’d drain her. With effort he pulled away and scooped her up out of her bed like a princess. Her head lolled over his arm and he looked down on her adoringly._

_“You’re mine now, Claire,” he said and fled the house with the taste of her blood clinging to the back of his throat and the joy of knowing that within the hour they’d be as one. Forever._

_***_

_Alexander carried Claire up the crumbling drive of the abandoned plantation house two hours before dawn. He had found it best to do this sort of thing when the possibility of his object of affection running away was at its lowest. It was no fun having to chase a distraught and frantic newly turned vampire through the woods in the middle of the night. Turning was a very powerful experience, most if not all new vampires had a moment of frantic panic just afterward in his experience._

_He walked through the front doors, which creaked heavily on their hinges long since in need of a good greasing. The windows were boarded up, conveniently blocking most of the sun that would creep through the cracks when the sun rose. The place stank of dust and mold and dead leaves littered the floor but one couldn’t be choosy when conducting something like this, what with invitations needed and what not. It would have to do._

_The two girls he’d taken sat in one corner, staring blankly in front of them with their knees pulled up, waiting. The house echoed with his step as he moved to the center of the huge front hall and laid Claire down reverently.  Then he sat down beside her to wait, a dagger specially selected for the purpose resting next to him. It was a lovely gold handled creation, with scrollwork over the guard and hilt and a slim double-edged blade. He wouldn’t be so vulgar as to do this like a barbarian. It had to be real, special._

_The minutes ticked by slowly but within half an hour, Claire stirred, groaning softly as she came around._

_Quickly, Alexander bit his wrist, making his own blood flow, that which would give Claire her new life. He didn’t want to frighten her again so pulled her into his lap before she could awaken fully and pressed his bleeding wrist to her mouth._

_“Drink,” he urged gently. “You have to drink.”_

_Claire’s eyes snapped open and she shoved his arm away, refusing to drink. Alexander tightened his grip and pushed his wrist back to her mouth. She was delirious from the chloroform. He held on to her and forced his wrist between her teeth until his blood poured into her mouth. She swallowed convulsively as she struggled blindly against him._

_“There we go,” he whispered. When she’d swallowed enough he moved his wrist reaching for the dagger._

_“What are you doing?’ Claire cried. He held her firm against him._

_“It only hurts a second,” he promised raising the dagger. Claire struggled harder in terror. Her heart raced, he could feel it through her back it pumped so hard. Alexander felt a thrill go through him. ‘I want a man who makes my heart race,’ she had said and here he was. She didn’t understand. She would soon. She’d awake to a whole new world._

_“No! Please!” Claire begged. Alexander plunged the dagger down, piercing her between her breast and straight into her heart and twisted. Quick and clean. Claire’s eyes went wide, she arched against the blade in a death throe, her mouth open in a silent wail and then she slumped back into his lap, her heart still._

_Alexander stroked her hair. “You’ll understand soon. The hard part is over. We’ll be together, forever,” he crooned to her corpse._

_***_

_Alexander paced. This was the most irritating part, the waiting. It could take minutes or it could take hours. It varied from one person to another. Claire had been ‘dead’ for hours. The sun had risen and his pacing was convoluted, designed to avoid the thin beams of sunlight that snuck through the boards over the windows._

_He had laid Claire back on the floor, arranging her limbs so she looked as if she were lying in state, his jacket bundled beneath her head. He had loosened her hair, spreading it around her in a dark halo. She looked so lovely lying there in her simple cotton nightdress, waiting to awaken. Like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty awaiting a prince’s kiss._

_The two girls still sat like dirty porcelain dolls next to the far wall, blank eyed never making a sound. Waiting for Claire to rise, as he did. Waiting to feed her and give her the blood she would need._

_Claire came back with a ragged gasp quite suddenly, sitting bolt upright. Alexander rushed to her side._

_“Shhh,” he soothed. “It’s alright. I’m here.”_

_Claire looked at him wild eyed, her hand went to her throat, then her mouth and finally to her breast where her fingers probed at the rent in the cloth, felt the blood that had dried there. She looked down at it in horror._

_“What have you done to me?” she breathed._

_“Claire,” he said gently. “It’s alright. You’re like me now.”_

_“What?” she spat. She looked at him and her eyes widened as if she were only just realizing to whom she spoke. She started shaking violently. The effect of heightened emotions, they were always at their highest when you first woke in transition. “You kidnapped me,” she said shaking her head._

_She scrambled away from him and Alexander tried to approach her slowly, if she panicked she’d run out into the sunlight and he’d have to wait until dark to find her.  By then she’d either have killed the first person she saw, driven by the need to feed without a thought to what she was doing or where… or she’d be so far from a human to prey on she’d die before he could find her. Once in transition you fed to complete it or you died within a day._

_“Your eyes. You bit me!  You made me drink your blood. What are you?” Claire railed, backing away her hand clutched to the spot where he’d driven the dagger into her heart. “You stabbed me. You killed me. Then how… what have you done to me?! What have you done to me!?” She turned in a frantic circle half bent over, wailing and crying._

_“I gave you my greatest gift. Now your voice will never tarnish, never fade. You’ll be young and beautiful forever. We’ll be together, forever,” Alexander said smiling with happiness. She’d understand as soon as he could calm her down. It was just her heightened emotions._

_“You’re mad!” Claire screamed at him. “What have you done to me!?”_

_She clutched at her head, shielding her eyes as she passed through a wan beam of sunlight that made them hurt. Alexander knew this was a very confusing time so he was understanding of her panic. Her head throbbed right now, the light hurt her eyes. Her muscles ached and she was ravenously hungry for blood though she didn’t know it. Her upper jaw would be throbbing with need as her new fangs begged to pierce through her gums. Sight and sound were heightened to the point of pain. She’d be hearing rats in the floor boards, birds in the trees, the rustle of forest animals in the leaves as if they were at her feet all the sounds blending together until it was a cacophony of noise. He’d made sure she wasn’t exposed to too much light as much for his own safety as hers but he could do nothing about sounds. Everything was new and different, disorientingly so. All of it, the transition pushing her to feed._

_“Shhh,” Alexander soothed again._

_Her gaze fell on the door, her eyes feverish through the tousled fall of her hair. She looked at him and then Claire bolted like a spooked animal._

_Alexander flash stepped and caught her, seizing her arms. She tried to fight him, screaming bloody murder but she hadn’t fed yet, hadn’t completed the transition. She was stronger now but not strong enough. “You’re in transition. You have to feed.” He motioned with his chin and one of the girls rose to her feet, trance-like and paced toward them with deliberate steps._

_“You’re mad, you’re mad,” Claire repeated over and over desperately, tears streaming down her cheeks. His heart broke, this was always difficult. Unable to control your emotions they’d overtake you. Unable to think straight.  He’d give her what she needed. She’d understand it all then._

_“Don’t run,” Alexander said as the girl reached them. He pushed Claire back a step and she stood there furtively looking around as if she could find another way out. But she couldn’t so she shifted nervously from foot to foot, a hand twisted in her nightdress._

_Alexander pulled the girl close and tilted her head to the side, exposing her throat. She was putty in his grasp. Claire’s eyes immediately fixated on it. Instinct driving her, making her notice the thing that would make her strong._

_“You have to feed,” he said again. Claire looked from her to him and back again in confusion. She shook her head. She didn’t know how, he thought. He’d show her._

_“Like this,” he said his eyes shifting and fangs extending, he sank his teeth into the girl’s throat and she never flinched. Claire gaped in revulsion and terror. Alexander pulled back, the girl’s wound dripping blood._

_He saw with satisfaction that Claire’s nostrils flared, taking in the smell of fresh blood. It would smell different to her now. As a human it only smelled coppery, metallic. As a vampire is smelled heady and spicy, rich and inviting. Nothing smelled better than blood. “That’s right, don’t fight it,” Alexander said guiding the girl toward Claire. Claire couldn’t stop looking at the blood, it hypnotized her, drew her to it like a starving man to food. She licked her lips hungrily, sucking in a sharp breath._

_The girl was so close now all Claire had to do was drink. Alexander reached out and stroked Claire’s hair affectionately, urging her on. “No,” Claire muttered. “No.” She stepped backward, away from him and the girl. “What have you done to her? Why does she not run away or scream?” she cried frantically._

_“You have to feed or you’ll die,” Alexander encouraged.  Claire shook like a leaf her face contorting with upset and confusion._

_“Then I’ll die. This is wrong.”_

_“No, I’d never let that happen,” Alexander said hurt. How could she say that? She was confused. She needed blood. Alexander grabbed her roughly and dragged her back to him, pushing her head toward the girl’s neck._

_“Drink,” he commanded._

_“No! I can’t” Claire spat. Alexander winced. She was confused he told himself again. Afraid. He would make her see._

_“You will drink,” he insisted, forcing her head down further. She fought him, jerking away so violently he was left with a handful of her hair, the roots bloody.  Alexander snarled in anger. Now this was just pure stubbornness. Why didn’t she drink? She’d die if she didn’t._

_Alexander sprang at her, far faster than she was and pinned her down bodily. She screamed and cried. But it was useless._

_“Come,” he told the girl and she did. “Kneel.” The girl sank to her knees. Claire was screaming again.”Feed her.” The girl dutifully drew her hair away from her neck and lowered her head._

_“No! No! What have you done to me? Please!”_

_Alexander placed a hand on Claire’s chest to keep her immobile and shoved the girl closer, the wound dripping warm enticing blood. Claire wriggled beneath him feebly and he had to shift position awkwardly to accomplish his task. He’d never had one fight as hard as she was not to feed._

_He pinned her nearest arm beneath his knee, his other leg baring down across her thighs so she couldn’t flee. Claire’s other arm pushed frantically at the girl, trying to get her away but she was compelled. She’d obey him no matter what Claire did. Alexander grasped Claire’s hair wrenching her head back. Her mouth opened in response, gasping and he shoved the girl’s throat between Claire’s teeth in the same manner he had his wrist so she had no choice but to feed. Claire gagged and fought it for a second longer. But it was enough._

_As she got her first taste of blood, the transition completed. Her eyes turned crimson and her fangs grew for the first time. She went still for an instant and then he heard her bite down viciously; desperate to get to the blood in the girl’s veins as bloodlust overcame her, unable to fight the need to feed. Finesse when feeding came with time._

_Alexander let go and Claire sat up, the girl clutched to her, sucking greedily. It wasn’t until he heard the girl’s heart slow and stop that Claire let go, her head lolled back, eyes half shut in the sleepy bliss that came with feeding, of quenching the insatiable hunger for blood. She panted with relief and her eyes returned to normal, her fangs retracted, as she came back to herself._

_He smiled. He’d known she just needed to feed. “Doesn’t that feel better?” he murmured._

_Claire looked at the girl’s dead body in her arms and her eyes widened with horror. “Oh my God,” she tilted the girl’s limp head up as if to revive her. “What have I done?  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she pleaded with the limp corpse. “I killed her. She’s dead. God forgive me.” She pushed the girl’s body away not knowing her own strength and instead of simply pushing it away she sent the body flying across the room._

_Claire scrambled to her feet in a renewed bout of upset with Alexander on her heels._

_“You’ve turned me into a monster,” she cried at him. Alexander shook his head fervently, his body low as he approached her._

_“No. You’re a vampire now. Like me,” he said assuring her she was wrong. “See?” He demonstrated by making his eyes flush and showing her his fangs. She grew still, gawking at him._

_“Like Dracula?” she spat incredulous._

_“No. Not exactly,” Alexander said. “Feel the power bursting inside you now? Isn’t it incredible?” he enthused. “You can hear anything, you can see in the dark, move at the speed of thought. You’re strong now. You can bid any human to do as you will. You’ll never die, never age. You can do anything, be anything.”_

_Claire shook her head frantically, crying again. “No. No. No. Why would you do this to me?”_

_Alexander shook his head not understanding. “Because it’s what you wanted. You are a gift. Your voice is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard and now it will never fade. You wanted me to take you away, give you a new life. One with adventure and danger. Away from this provincial city. It’s a whole other world for you now.”_

_“What? I never asked for this. I don’t want this. You did this because you like my singing?! I want to go home,” Claire cried. Alexander reached for her, to gather her to him but she sidestepped him. Then with her new found speed, she sprinted for the door._

_It happened so quickly that despite Alexander’s superior speed he couldn’t reach her before she had gotten it open and attempted to step outside. Sunlight flooded over her and she screamed in pain as she started to burn, recoiling from it._

_Alexander ran to her. “Shut the door!” he commanded the other girl who had gone unnoticed sitting in the corner in a stupor. The girl obeyed, dashing to slam it, stopping and standing in place without another command to obey when she had. Alexander pulled Claire back and she hit at him._

_“What have you done to me?” Claire cried looking up at him piteously. This was not the turning honeymoon he’d been planning on. But one could never predict how a new vampire would react. It would get better._

_“Don’t. Be still, you’ll hurt yourself,” he hissed at her.  “The sun will burn you now. It can kill you. You can’t go out in it. We’re creatures of the night, Claire. The shadows are our home.”_

_“I’m a monster. A murderer. You’ve taken everything from me, made me this…this thing,” Claire cried giving up her fight and curling into a ball. She sobbed and Alexander wrapped his arms around her she didn’t fight him and he sighed with relief and joy. Tiny steps at a time, but she was adjusting. Her took her face in his hands and turned it up to look at her._

_“Your emotions are heightened right now. It’s part of the transformation. It’s perfectly normal,” Alexander said. She was overcome, that was all. As soon as she got control of her emotions, she’d be fine. He could help her. “You can make it stop. The fear you’re feeling? You can turn it off. Like a switch. You don’t have to be afraid of anything ever again.”_

_“I’ll stop being afraid?” Claire asked relaxing just a little. There, he thought, she was coming around._

_“Yes. You don’t have to feel anything you don’t want to,” he said smiling brightly. “It’s okay. I love you. I know you love me. We can do this, together.”_

_Claire’s eyes went dark and still. “Love you? I never loved you. You were a friend of my father’s, an admirer of my singing, nothing more. I loathe you for what you’ve done to me. Why would I turn off my feelings when all I have left is the utter and complete hatred I feel for you?”_

_Alexander blinked, taken aback harshly. “No. Claire. Don’t say that. I know it’s not true. You’re upset. This is a very emotional time for a vampire. You’ll adjust. You’ll see.”_

_“No,” Claire said her voice steely. “I’m going to live forever? Then I will hate you until the day I die.”_


	11. Chapter 11

“From there things just went downhill,” Alexander said coming out of his creepy reverie. He shook his head, blonde hair shimmying over his forehead and winced sadly. ‘Ave Maria’ ended and the Latino man standing guard over the phonograph reset the needle making it play again. “I tried to teach her to compel on the other girl I had brought her but she compelled her to run. She refused to feed again. Nothing I did changed her mind. She went days without blood. She was so _stubborn_. Finally, she was too weak and I went hunting for her but when I returned she’d fled. She focused on the wrong emotion, poured everything into it. If I could have just kept her for a while longer I know it would have been different.”

Elena stood there in her shackles and gawked at him. He was genuinely hurt. He honestly believed he could have made Claire love him for what he’d done. She was trying to form words for how outrageously insane that was. Poor Claire. She and Damon had said Alexander was crazy but this took the cake.

How had Claire become what she was now if she had been so despondent then, refusing to feed at all? It reminded Elena of Stefan when he’d fed on human blood again, hating himself for it, fighting not to hurt anyone. How could she feed without caring now, when in the beginning she’d loathed the act to the point of starving herself?

The way Alexander told it, Claire seemed so different back then. Different even than the version of her Damon had known in 1927. She’d been innocent almost, sweet if a bit mischievous and stubborn. She’d had a life, a family and Alexander had taken it all away from her. Torn her from it in the dead of night.

“My God,” Elena said. “You took her from her bed. Forced her to turn. She begged you not to do it and you did it anyway and you thought she would love you for it? No wonder she hates you.”

Alexander looked at her sharply, raking his hair from his face back with one hand. “I was very generous,” he growled. “She was given to me and I gave her everything she wanted. She wanted to be taken away. I took her. She wanted adventure and danger. I gave it to her. I gave her an entirely new existence, eternal life. Froze her beauty and her voice in time. All that I asked was that she let me rule her and she could have had anything she wanted. Anything. I just wanted her to love me and do as I said and I would have been her slave.”

Elena was gaping at him. He was completely insane. Damon hadn’t been kidding. Alexander shook his head and paced back and forth in front of her, oblivious to the horror written all over Elena’s face.

“When Katherine returned and found out what had happened, she was beside herself. Furious even. I was so distraught over Claire leaving, it took me a few days to realize where she’d gone. Home, she went home. I tried to get her back, but by the time we got there they were dragging her from the house to a fire. She was screaming and Katherine wouldn’t let me save her. She gave her to me and then she wouldn’t let me get her back,” he wailed the last like a child deprived of a favorite toy. 

“She said I’d exposed us with all the killings in town, that it was too late. That we had to leave before they killed us too. I was going to kill Claire’s parents for what they did, but Katherine wouldn’t let me do that either. It was too risky she said. She was heartbroken that her gift to me was so wasted.”

That didn’t sound like the Katherine Elena knew at all. Katherine Pierce didn’t leave loose ends. Ever. There had to be a reason she left Claire’s parents alive, wouldn’t let Alexander retrieve her. But why had she wanted Claire turned? That was obviously her entire game, to incite Alexander to obsession so he would turn Claire. Why not just kill her? Why turn her? That was an awful lot of trouble to go to.

“I didn’t know she survived,” Alexander went on, his face the picture of befuddled sad youth. “If I had….,” his voice trailed off for a moment.

Elena blinked. If Alexander hadn’t known Claire survived her parents attempted killing…how had he known she was in Chicago in 1927?

“Wait, you thought she died in that fire? If you thought Claire was dead how did you know she was in Chicago in 1927?”

“Rumors, stories. One of the most attractive things about Claire was her voice. She is a coloratura mezzo-soprano. It’s rare. Rare enough that when I heard whispers in the opera community of one who matched her description joining the Chicago Opera, I had to see for myself,” Alexander said, then his tone turned bitterly acidic. 

Elena’s head was reeling as Alexander went on. Claire’s belief that her voice was the bane of her existence, that it inadvertently led to her losing everything and everyone she cared for…was true. It had led to her being turned (albeit under Katherine’s influence), led to her being found in Chicago, led to the confrontation that had resulted in her and Damon’s parting and now had led to Vincent’s death and possibly hers, Damon’s, Stefan’s and Elena’s. Claire’s voice was the catalyst for a string of tragedies so long it had spanned more than a century.

Something vague about nightingales and their connection between love and death flitted through Elena’s head from her Sophomore English Literature class that she couldn’t quite grasp. She thought of Romeo and Juliet for some reason.

“Then along came Damon Salvatore. And he took her. She loved him when she wouldn’t love me. Just as he tried to take Katherine from Stefan. I didn’t know then that Stefan was the beloved she spoke of and Damon his brother. Katherine warned me off in Chicago. Insisted that I leave them alone, that it was too dangerous, they’d surely kill me. But I couldn’t stand for that. She was right, Damon nearly succeeded. Now he would take you the same way he took Claire, tried to take Katherine. Damon is always taking what doesn’t belong to him. This time I’m going to be doing the taking.” Alexander scowled deeply, hatred burning in his eyes.

“Katherine was in Chicago in 1927?” Elena spat in surprise. What did that mean? It couldn’t be a coincidence not with everything else they’d learned recently. She shook her head at Alexander.

“Damon didn’t take Katherine from Stefan. She led him on, toyed with him. He thought she loved him. Just like you. You know that’s what Katherine was doing don’t you? Using you? She wanted you to turn Claire for some reason. Damon didn’t take Claire from you either. No matter what Katherine said you can’t give a person to someone like a new puppy.”

Alexander snarled at her, blue-gray eyes flashing angrily. She’d said too much. Pushed the wrong button. He backhanded her. Elena yelped in pain, her lip split but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying. He hadn’t hit her hard, not for a vampire. He hadn’t used any more force than a human would have. It still hurt but that told her he didn’t want to hurt her, not yet.

“You’re wrong. Katherine did love me and if not for Stefan, she’d have been with me. But he had her first. I respect that. Unlike Damon.”

Alexander was delusional. Elena was tempted to tell him what an idiot he was for believing Katherine loved him. Katherine cared about only herself and her own survival…or did. Elena winced, her lip bleeding and bruised, but her brain still functioned just fine.

“But Katherine is gone now,” Alexander said his voice suddenly rough. Was he actually mourning her? He reached out a cold hand to stroke Elena’s cheek and she pulled as far away from him as the shackles allowed. It wasn’t far enough to evade him but at least she was making an effort. He made her skin crawl. He let his gaze flit over her face thoughtfully for a moment, his thumb grazing the spilt he’d made in her lip. When he pulled it away there was a smear of her blood on it and he put it to his mouth, sucking it from the pad of his thumb, savoring it long after it was gone.

When he looked up again his eyes were flushed red, the dark veins around them like cracks in marble. Elena quelled with fear. What was he going to do? Bite her? “Perhaps I’ll turn you,” he suggested.

“Because I look like Katherine?” Elena asked softly.  Alexander smiled faintly, pleased by her fearful reaction. The Latino man, reset the needle on the phonograph yet again. Elena was never going to want to hear ‘Ave Maria’ again as long as she lived.

“In part. But mostly because Damon is in love with you. Wouldn’t it be properly ironic if I took both women he loved? A new beauty to replace the old. Would you like that? Or would it be the thing you wanted least in this world?” he asked his demeanor now darkly teasing, a poor facsimile of Damon’s much better seductive nature.

“I don’t want to be a vampire,” Elena admitted.

He began toying with the ends of her hair, running his fingers through it as if he were enjoying the sensation of the silky strands as they trailed over them. “Not even for your sweet Stefan?”

“No,” Elena said becoming truly afraid. If he turned her before help arrived… she didn’t want to think about that.

“Does he know that?” Alexander asked letting go of her hair and sliding his fingers over the strap of her dress.  Elena swallowed hard.

“Answer now,” Alexander encouraged. Elena clamped her mouth shut, she didn’t like where this conversation was headed. Alexander smirked. “I could simply compel the truth from you.”

“You can’t compel me,” Elena said nervously. Alexander arched a brow.

“Why? Because of your little necklace full of vervain? Katherine told me all about it,” he said pointing at the pendant sitting in the hollow of her throat. “It only works if you’re wearing it.”

He reached forward with blinding speed, snagging the necklace and tossing it aside on the floor boards. Elena watched it despondently skid to land at the feet of the other compelled man in the room. A white man standing guard near the door. The man didn’t even blink.

Elena began to panic. It should have burned him when he touched the necklace. He shouldn’t have been able to grasp it long enough to pull it off. Elijah had been able to but he was an Original, you didn’t get more powerful than that. Alexander was old, but he was just another vampire. To Elena’s partial relief he did shake his hand as if it had scalded him to touch it but the tell-tale circular burn it should have produced was absent. 

Now Alexander could compel her to tell him anything he wanted to know. Oh God, what if he did as Claire had said was his wont? What if he compelled Elena to go after one of them until either she or they were dead?

“Now then, I shall ask you anything I like. Whether you like it or not,” he said quite pleased with himself. He stepped forward until he was so close she could feel his breath on her face, his eyes trying to capture hers. It was very cool. He didn’t bother with drinking coffee to imitate human warmth like many vampires did. Like Damon, Stefan and Claire. He didn’t care to appear human.

Elena turned her head away and squeezed her eyes shut. Alexander laughed at her for it.

“You don’t have to compel me,” Elena insisted fervently. “I’ll answer you.”

“Will you now?” Alexander said with a snide smile.  Elena’s throat felt dry, fear pulsed through her veins like poison making her breath come in shaky gasps.

“But only if you answer me too. A question for a question.”

Alexander narrowed his eyes, canting his head. He looked so much like a bird of prey surveying a potential meal while it thrashed half dead on the ground in that moment it was unnerving. Eat the helpless rabbit quickly or play with it for a while first?

“Are you trying to negotiate terms with me?”

“It’s only fair,” Elena said boldly, her voice sounding far more confident than she felt. If she could keep him talking instead of acting until Stefan, Damon and Claire got here...if she could pry information out of Alexander about what he had planned… “You’re going to kill me or turn me anyway. What harm could it do?”

Alexander chortled. “Fair. Humans and their ‘fairness’. Such an idealistic concept,” he said. “Okay. Why not? It will amuse me.”

Elena almost sighed with relief though Alexander’s comment made a chill go up her spine. Hadn’t Claire said life wasn’t fair, for any of them?

“You first,” Alexander prodded. “Does Stefan know you don’t want to be a vampire?”

“No. It’s never come up,” Elena said truthfully.

“Never? Hm. Curious. I’m certain he must have thought about it, assuming he really does love you,” Alexander mused.

“That’s two questions,” Elena pointed out. Alexander grinned broadly, his eyes bright with amusement.

“My you are bold,” he said. “Okay, scratch that. Ask your question.”

“Why didn’t my necklace burn you?”

“Never you mind about that,” Alexander said as if he were speaking to a child who’d asked something it wasn’t old enough to know about yet.

“You said you’d answer,” Elena rebuked. Alexander’s eyebrows went up and for an instant Elena was afraid she’d made him angry enough to hit her again but he only smiled.

“I agreed to answer. I never said you’d like the answers I gave.”

Elena glared at him. Another vampire literal genie.

“My turn. Does dear Damon know that you don’t want to be a vampire?”

“No,” Elena answered.

“Mmm,” Alexander said contemplatively. “That’s good to know. Must have all my ducks in a row when he gets here.”

“Why?” Elena asked before she could think about the fact that she might be wasting a question.

“You’re the bait, ma chère,” he said twining a piece of her hair around one finger playfully. “When Damon arrives, he’ll be forced to choose. You or Claire. I wonder which it will be?”

“What happens to…,” Elena started to ask. Alexander raised the finger he’d had her hair coiled around.

“Ah. Ah,” he admonished. “You had your question. Now I get mine.” Elena snapped her mouth shut. She had to play by the rule she’d established though she was desperately worried what the answer would have been.

“Do you love Stefan?” Alexander asked.

“Yes,” Elena answered. Alexander tilted his head as if the answer didn’t surprise him.

My turn. What happens to whoever Damon doesn’t choose?” Elena asked anxiously.

“That depends entirely on Damon. If he chooses you, Claire dies. If he chooses her, you die…or I turn you. I haven’t decided yet.”

Elena swallowed hard. Alexander snickered callously.

“Don’t worry, Elena. If I do turn you, I want him to see it happen. You’re safe..for now.”

Elena was relieved at that. Prepared Stefan, Damon and Claire could take Alexander, even with all his compelled minions. Speaking of, where were the rest of those minions? There were only two in the room. One was dead; Claire had killed Brad Cooper in the alley to save her. That left four unaccounted for.

“I think it’s my turn,” Alexander said. He bit his lip as if having to think hard about his next question. “You say you love Stefan. I believe you. What about Damon? Do you love him?”

Elena blinked a couple of times. What kind of question was that? She wasn’t Katherine.

“No,” she answered, her heart fluttering in her chest. She couldn’t answer that question, she didn’t even know the answer. There was something between them but she’d never been able to put her finger on it.  What did she feel for Damon?

Alexander tilted his head as if listening to a distant sound for a moment. Then he looked at her squarely. “You’re lying,” Alexander said. “I can hear your heart beat. It jumps when you lie.”

“I don’t love, Damon. I care about him but…,” Elena reiterated.

“I don’t believe you,” Alexander said. Suddenly he had closed the space between them, and seized her chin in a vice like grip. He’d captured her gaze before she could look away and now Elena stared back into his blue-gray eyes helpless as they dilated.

“Tell me true, Elena. Do you love Damon Salvatore?” he compelled.

Woodenly, against her will, Elena answered him. Answered him when she couldn’t answer herself. “I don’t know what I feel for Damon. He got under my skin and now, no matter what I do, I can’t shake him.”

Alexander released her mentally and physically and grinned a grin Elena would never be able to put into words. Maniacal was the closest she could come but even that didn’t cover it. It looked both highly amused, intrigued and coldly angry all at the same time.

“Interesting,” he said heatedly. “That’s quite a tangled melodrama waiting to happen.” Then he smiled secretively to himself.  “Too bad it’ll never get to play out.” 

Elena was deeply disturbed. What did her answer mean? She couldn’t even understand it. She was so utterly confused by it she couldn’t think.

“Well, go on. It’s your turn,” Alexander said seeming greatly satisfied with the confusion he’d wrought.

“What are the gas cans for?” she asked her eyes searching for something to grasp onto and falling on the squared red containers with their long black necks. Her arms were starting to ache being strung over her head for so long. She was suddenly much more aware of her physical discomfort after Alexander had forced an answer about Damon from her. Why?

“Gasoline, one presumes,” Alexander said sarcastically. Elena looked at him. That wasn’t an answer and he knew it. His lips quirked in amusement. He was enjoying himself now more than ever. Elena couldn’t understand why. He relented. “Damon tried to burn me alive. I’m going to return the favor. After I break him of course. And Claire. It’s only fair.”

Renewed dread seeped into Elena’s limbs. “That’s what the fires are for,” she said thinking aloud, her head flicking to look from one blazing fireplace to the other.

“Bravo. Excellently deduced,” Alexander congratulated mockingly. Elena’s eyes were locked on the pile of ash she’d previously assumed was just from an old fire with a sick feeling. Alexander followed her gaze and grinned smugly.

“Yes, that’s dearly departed Vincent.”

Elena swallowed the gout of bile that rose in her throat at the confession. “You’re a monster.”

“Thank you for noticing,” Alexander agreed prideful, arrogant.

Elena felt panic swell in her breast. “You know it won’t work. There’s three of them. No matter how old you are or how many minions you have they will kill you,” Elena said fervently. She kept the fact she was sure Damon would drag Bonnie into this to herself. She didn’t want Bonnie involved. She’d rather die than let anyone else get hurt but it was out of her hands now.

“Such confidence,” Alexander said. “I wouldn’t be.”

“Why not?” Elena asked.

“That’s two questions, Elena. Tsk. Tsk. You’re breaking the rules,” Alexander chided her.  He shrugged. “But we’ll call this one a freebie.” The guy manning the phonograph reset the needle and began ‘Ave Maria’ for the millionth time.

“I have all sorts of surprises planned for your little cadre of protectors,” Alexander admitted.

“Like what?” Elena asked fearfully. Alexander smirked at her darkly.

“Only one freebie per customer, Elena. Don’t worry you’re pretty little head about it.”

Elena swallowed her fear. Oh, God they were going to walk straight into a trap, she just knew it.  Screw the game of Twenty Questions.

“You’re not going to let any of us live are you?”

Alexander tilted his head again. “Now what would be the fun in that?”

Elena’s heart sank. They were walking into a trap, one that was sure to be deadly and there was nothing she could do to warn them.  Now she had to pray that Bonnie would be the secret weapon that would tip the balance. If Alexander didn’t have a witch of his own. Suddenly the future looked bleak and in incredibly short supply.

 

***

 

Damon arrived on Bonnie’s doorstep without any of the evasive trail weaving he’d done before. Brad Cooper was keeping the parking lot guy company at the bottom of the quarry where Damon had dropped him. He wondered briefly, in a thousand years, when the lake ran dry, how many vampire kills would be weighted to its bottom for future archeologist to find? He couldn’t help the snicker that caused. He’d love to see their faces while they tried to explain that anomaly. He just might be around to see it too.

It was random thoughts like that one that kept Damon from coming unglued. Because Claire’s voice still echoed in his head screaming plaintively at him _‘Is my love not enough?_ ’ followed by his own saying the same words to Katherine. And then echoed again by the devastating  sound of Katherine telling him ‘The truth is I never loved you. It was always Stefan.’, that had come only hours before Elena had declared ‘I love Stefan. It’s always going to be Stefan.’ All the while his conscience mocked him darkly that he’d have to choose one of them. He couldn’t have them both and he deserved neither of them. Was that more the problem than him loving them both? That he felt he didn’t deserve either of them and so was sabotaging himself?

Someone was going to die tonight. There was no way around it. There was no way they could take Alexander now without one of them losing their life in the process. His conscience mocked him again, as he knocked on Bonnie’s door hard and insistently. _‘Which of them can you stand to lose? Which one’s death would destroy you? The sun or the moon? The light or the dark? The fettered one or the free one? The one you can’t have or the one you can? The one who makes you yearn or the one who feels like home?’_

 _“Neither,”_ he snapped to himself as something pulled at his gut again, tugged at the center of his being with exigent urgency. _‘I never should have left.’_

“Bonnie!” Damon called, rapping on the door again as much to distract himself as to get her attention. What was taking her so long anyway? The witch’s self-righteous belittling of him would be nice right about now. At least then he wouldn’t have to listen to his conscience belittling him.

The door opened with the clatter of the chain lock and the creak of a knob that needed oiling. Bonnie stood there with one of her many over sized sweater jackets wrapped protectively around her. Her hair was loose and slightly rumbled and her eyes a little bleary. It was late, very late. She must have been asleep.

“Damon?” she said groggily.

Damon spared no words on lengthy explanations. “We found Alexander.”

“You did? How?” Bonnie asked blinking herself more awake.

“No time, he has Elena,” Doman insisted.

Bonnie came fully awake very quickly. “What?! How could you let that happen?” She spat instantly furious with him.

“Me?” Damon said incredulous. Just once could she not blame him for what ever happened? It didn’t matter if he’d even been there, it _would_ be his fault somehow. “I didn’t _let_ anything happen. Elena insisted on going and it backfired. Like it does every single time Elena gets to make the decisions. So let’s go. You have a best friend to save.”

Bonnie gritted her teeth and went thin lipped with barely contained anger at him that made her green eyes bright but she turned back on her heel and grabbed her keys. “You should have stopped her,” she insisted slamming the door shut behind her. Her father must not have been home.

“How?” Damon asked derisively as they clomped down the porch stairs and headed for his car. “I would have chained her up and thrown her in a well until this was all over but I got over ruled, as usual. Her choice, as always.”

“This is your fault. You’re supposed to protect her,” Bonnie spat back, her voice shaking with worry, as they reached it. Damon wrenched the passenger side door open for her, automatically falling into habits established long ago. Men opened doors for women, even if they were berating them in the process. Damon Salvatore, chivalrous? Not at all.

“I tried. I will. We all will,” Damon said and Bonnie flung herself into the car. Damon shut the door on her next outburst of Damon-centric accusation. Well, at least it got his mind off his dilemma and worry. Bonnie Bennett, witch, judgy bitch and conscience blocker since 1992. Damon went around and got in.

“I swear if Elena gets hurt, you’re the one who is going to pay for it,” Bonnie bit as soon as he opened the door.

“Don’t worry. Alexander will probably do that for you,” he snipped right back, as he slammed his door and turned over the ignition. Bonnie’s mouth opened but nothing came out of it. Damon snorted as he turned out and sped back toward the boarding house. He’d won that round. Sort of.

The ride back was very quiet. Bonnie sullenly petulant in the passenger seat but Damon certain she’d do everything she could to help with Elena’s life in danger. Finally, he cleared his throat, saying hesitantly, “So, uh, have you thought about that favor anymore?”

“I can’t, Damon. She’s a vampire,” Bonnie said shaking her head. “Even though I saw all that, it was your point of view. I don’t know her. I didn’t even want to make one for Caroline at first and she’s my friend.”

Damon’s stomach knotted and he felt nauseous. Failed before he’d even begun. As usual. Damon couldn’t win no matter what he did. “I bet if it was Elena I was asking for, you wouldn’t even blink,” Damon growled low in his throat, his teeth suddenly gritted so hard it made his jaw hurt. “You’re right you don’t know her. You know absolutely nothing about her.”

“I’m sorry,” Bonnie muttered.

Bonnie started to reach in her pocket, to give the ring back Damon supposed. He didn’t even have the heart to hit something in fury. He just felt beaten. He’d failed…again. Failure was all he’d ever known, sometimes he didn’t know why he tried anymore. He thought about pointing out Claire had killed two people in Elena’s defense tonight already but he figured that’d only make Bonnie more determined to deny him the daylight ring. They had after all been human, regardless. Why did he try?

“Keep it,” he said. “It’s useless now.”

Bonnie looked down and her face pinched. “Maybe if I knew her first.”

“Yeah,” Damon said gruffly. “Maybe.”  He highly doubted it. Funnily enough, Damon knew without a doubt had they needed Claire’s help to defeat Alexander and she’d only been willing to give it if she got the ring…Bonnie would have done it.  Instead, she never blinked about saving Elena and Bonnie shot Damon down. No good deed goes unpunished. And people wondered why either of them were the way they were. Damon winced fighting the burn that suddenly developed in his nose and the sharp jerk that he felt in his chest. “Don’t tell Claire about it.”

Bonnie shook her head in confusion. “Why not?”

“Because she’s lost enough. She doesn’t need to know she lost something she never had.”

Bonnie swallowed and pulled her hand out of her pocket, nodding jerkily a strange expression on her face. 

 _‘Will she lose you too?’_ his conscience asked distantly.

 _‘If it’ll keep her alive. If it’ll keep them both alive,’_ he argued.

 _‘Everything you’ve done during this, everything you did in 1927, you’ve done for her. Right or wrong,’_ it said back calmly.

 _‘I’ve done it for them both. I love them both. We have to save Elena,’_ Damon insisted.

Claire’s voice haunted him again. _‘Is my love not enough?’_

 _‘Then why can’t you let Claire die?’_ his conscience asked.

Damon didn’t get to answer himself because with a slight jerk as Bonnie yelped his name, he realized he was in the driveway of the boarding house and he’d nearly run over the decorative edging stones that separated the circular drive from the lawn. Damon hit the brakes, nearly sending Bonnie up onto the dashboard.  Without missing a beat, Damon shrugged it off.

“That’s why you should wear your seat belt.”

Bonnie glared at him as they got out and stalked toward the house with Damon following on her heels.

The thing about the Salvatore home was, if someone was in it, as often as not, it wasn’t locked and it proved to be true now. Why bother to lock the door when anything save another vampire wasn’t a threat? Bonnie pushed into the house. Damon shut the door behind him. Claire and Stefan turned in unison from their spot by the liquor table in the living room to peer toward the foyer, both with glasses of blood in their hand. Damon’s raised a brow at Stefan, he could tell by the smell it was human blood in both glasses. Both he and Claire were grim and serious. On Stefan, it came as no surprise but Claire’s was the calm variety not the ‘move too fast and I’ll rip your throat out’ kind Damon was used to.

“Bonnie, this is Claire Dominic,” Damon introduced as he and Bonnie moved to join them.

“Hi,” Bonnie said with faint discomfort, holding out her hand. Claire didn’t take it, she had busied herself pouring a third glass of blood though her eyes flicked briefly to Bonnie’s extended hand.

“Pleased to meet you, Bonnie. I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said politely as she held the glass out to Damon.

He couldn’t help the faint quirking of his lips. He was still hungry and she knew it. He hadn’t drank more than he had to before he went to go fetch Bonnie. She always knew what he wanted or needed without him asking. As he had always known the same of her…until now, now, she was closed off from him. Distant and detached. He frowned, that hurt for some reason he couldn’t explain. _‘Is my love not enough?’_

He came around the couch to take it and Bonnie gave a little surprised inhalation of breath that she tried to keep as quiet as possible. Damon looked back at her and Claire had her brows raised over it. Stefan looked worried. What else was new?

“Something wrong?” Stefan asked.

Bonnie shook her head briefly, looking at Damon and Claire as if they’d both grown a second head. “No. I just thought I saw…nothing, it was nothing.”

“Saw what?” Damon asked confused. He looked down at himself and then at Claire. She looked back at him just as befuddled. They didn’t look any different than they ever had.  Bonnie was still looking at the two of them oddly.

“Bonnie?” Stefan prodded. Bonnie shook her head again as if to clear it.

“I just… for a second I thought there was this silver thread between you two, but it’s gone. Must have been my imagination,” Bonnie said to Damon and Claire, shrugging it off with a slight shiver. “Just a trick of the light.”

“Okay. No bourbon for you,” he joked, then turned serious. “If there’s something wrong with you speak now. Last thing we need is a malfunctioning witch on the battle field.”

“I’m fine, Damon,” Bonnie insisted with irritation. “Not as if you care anyway.”

“That’s a bit unfair. I care,” Damon snorted.            

“Yeah about if I can do what you want or not,” Bonnie snarked back.

“O…kay. Can we all play nice, please?” Stefan asked.

“I’m being nice,” Damon insisted. He thought he was being more than nice considering the circumstances.

“Yeah, sorry,” Bonnie apologized sheepishly. “We’re all trying to save Elena, right?”

“Yes, we are,” Claire said in a modulated voice so unlike herself Damon glanced at her sharply. “So how about we stop standing around talking about it and do it?”  Claire’s tone gave Damon a foreboding feeling for some reason and that tug yanked at his insides again urgently.

“Sounds good to me,” Bonnie said but she gave Claire another of her patented ‘I’m trying to judge you’ looks. “But, you don’t even really know Elena.”

“Do I need to?” Claire said shortly as she set down her glass of blood. Bonnie’s eyebrows went up then down and then back up again like they were attached to a pulley and her eyes got large, she smiled faintly. It was a surprised but pleased expression. 

“No. I guess not,” she said softly.

“Now, I know you’re Elena’s best friend. I know you’re a witch.  What I don’t know is if you can do this. Alexander is over six hundred years old. Can you take him?” Claire said. She was being, dare Damon say it, militant.

This was new. That bothered Damon. New usually meant unforeseen consequences or some course of action he wasn’t aware of.

“I can take him,” Bonnie said pridefully, that obstinate chin of hers lifting into the air and standing up straighter.  Damon didn’t begrudge her the moment of arrogance. She was wielding the power of a hundred witches. She should be able to take Klaus, Alexander wasn’t even a fly to her right now. Assuming of course something else didn’t put her out of commission. Bonnie seemed to forget magic didn’t fix everything nor did it combat a mundane physical attack from a mundane source.

“Good,” Claire said nodding. “Then let’s do this.”

Damon cast Stefan a look, wondering if he saw the oddness of Claire’s behavior. But his face was resolute and as broody as it ever was. There was no telling. His brother tossed back the last of his blood and Damon followed suit. They clunked their glasses down on the table.

“You heard the lady,” Stefan said.

 

***

 

They arrived at the Old Miller Meeting House with two hours to spare before dawn. It wasn’t much time but in two hours if they weren’t out and gone, they were dead anyway.  The threesome’s feet made little noise on the leaf litter beneath the soles of their shoes, the vampires moving so lightly that they barely disturbed it.

They had left Damon’s car in a clearing some way back, out of sight and off the road. They were almost to the edge of the woods, bathed in near complete darkness with Bonnie depending on them to lead her. The vampires required no extra illumination, seeing as well in the dark as in the light. Bonnie would have broken a leg stumbling around through it, if not for her hand gripping Stefan’s shoulder to keep from losing her way in the night.

“Damn it. Where the hell is he? At a teacher’s symposium with a cross bow and some vervain grenades?” Damon growled quietly as he shut his phone off after trying to reach Alaric one last time. He would very much have liked to have Alaric with them given the circumstances. Hell, if he had Alaric here he could pull another vamp speed neck snap on Claire and keep her out of harm’s way. But no, Alaric was nowhere to be found. “He better not be shacked up with some sexy math teacher while we’re out here playing ‘hide and go screw yourself’ with Alexander.”

Damon briefly wondered what Alaric would think of Claire. He’d probably give Damon hell for it, rag on him endlessly about it. He’d already told Damon he was going to use Damon’s confession of giving Rose a perfect dream as he put her out of her misery against him one day. He’d been drunk when he’d told Alaric that. But he had a feeling Alaric would begrudgingly like Claire.

Around them crickets sang in the shadows and the occasional call of a toad could be heard. Somewhere an owl hooted on silent wings.  As they emerged from the woods to peer at the Meeting House some hundred yards away from the tree line Damon caught his brother’s arm and motioned with his head for Bonnie to take the last few steps on her own to join Claire beneath a strappy pine.

“Claire seem a little too calm to you?” Damon asked so quietly his lips barely moved.

“No. She seems focused,” Stefan said back a little louder than Damon would have liked. “If you’re trying to be discreet you’re doing a bad job of it. You know she can hear us.”

Damon’s nose wrinkled in agitation with his brother. Yes, of course he knew that but there hadn’t exactly been a chance for him to say anything in private had there? What with Claire raring to go.

“You don’t think she’s a little too gung ho all of a sudden?”

“She’s waited over a hundred years to kill the guy who turned her. I think she’s being down right patient,” Stefan said nonchalantly. Damon frowned. It hadn’t been a hundred years, it had been a few weeks, since they’d been under the misinformed notion the bastard was dead for eighty years.

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Claire isn’t patient. She goes rage blind and kills anything in her way she doesn’t wait for the opportune moment to strike,” he hissed.

“People change, Damon,” Stefan said in explanation as if it were obvious but something about Claire’s behavior and Stefan’s easy acceptance of it made the small hairs on the back of Damon’s neck stand on end and he felt that strange tug at the center of his being again. He had a bad feeling about this.

But what could he do? Nothing. Either they all went in and some of them got out, or only some of them went in and none of them did. He didn’t have a choice. Damon despised not being in control of a situation. Damn Elena for being so hard headed. Damn Alexander for not dying the first time Damon tried to kill him. When Damon killed someone he expected them to stay dead.

“In the matter of a few hours?” Damon whispered harshly to his baby brother. Stefan was about to respond when Claire looked back over her shoulder. Oh, she’d heard everything they’d said alright, she had her feet apart and her arms crossed, looking down that pert little nose of hers knowingly.

“Are you two done? Or should Bonnie and I just save Elena by ourselves?” she said haughtily and for a moment she looked so much like Katherine demanding someone do as she said Damon had to blink to clear the image from his head. Even Stefan looked a little discomfited by it.

Damon looked at his little brother and widened his eyes as if to say  ‘See?’ But Stefan just strode to meet them and Damon was forced to follow or be left behind. He growled softly and stalked after Stefan.

 The Meeting House wasn’t much to look at.  It was a typical 19th century two story building on a stone foundation with feathered clapboard that had once been pristine white but was now peeling and cracked, the white faded to a sort of whitish-gray. The gable roof was missing more than a few shingles and the doors, of which Damon knew from his youth, there were two—one in the front and one in the back—were narrow, wide enough for only one person to pass through at a time.

Inside Damon knew that each floor was essentially one huge room with fireplaces bracketing either side, the space broken only by the flight of stairs that led between them. In Damon’s day it had been filled with tables and chairs, candelabras and oil lamps, podiums and pews that little Stefan and Charlie Miller had delighted in hiding amongst. A dirt path, over grown through the years but recently treaded flat, ran from the building toward one side of the field the Meeting House stood in, toward the road Damon and the others had avoided, coming in the back way instead.

And on the low front stoop—which was a large slab of slate--stood Jacob Miller, his red hair standing out even in the darkness. He paced nervously back and forth in front of the door as if waiting for something he dreaded. Damon knew what he was waiting for. Them.

“There’s the man of the house,” Damon said coming even with the others.

“Yep,” Claire said. “I’ll go kill him.”

“What?” Bonnie spat, incredulous.

Stefan placed a hand on her shoulder to calm the outraged witch. Claire looked at her with a cold remorselessness and then snorted.

“You didn’t tell her?’

“We hadn’t exactly gotten to that part,” Damon excused, chagrined. Actually, they hadn’t gotten to any part of it. He’d been too busy trying to convince Bonnie to make Claire a daylight ring.

“Carrot top over there owns this house. Which means we can’t get in without an invitation. Now, I don’t know how much you know about vampires but he’s going to have been compelled _not_ to let us in. That’s Alexander’s bag,” Claire said.

“But I can get in. I’m human,” Bonnie argued gruffly.

“And summarily get shot, or disemboweled or eaten,” Damon countered. Bonnie looked slightly annoyed at his blunt response.

“I can pop Alexander’s skull like an egg,” Bonnie insisted.

“But not the five compelled humans he has in there to do his dirty work,” Stefan said.

“What are you talking about?” Bonnie said confounded.

“You know all the missing people lately? Yeah, well there were more and Alexander has them. They’re his evil little minions now. They march to the beat of his drum,” Damon said.

“I’m not going to help you hurt innocent people, Damon,” Bonnie said shaking her head angrily.

“They’re Alexander’s puppets. That by default makes them evil, willing or not. Alexander’s the bad guy. You’re going to play morality police with us right now? Really?” Damon said incredulous.

“You won’t have a choice. This is what Alexander does. It’s meant to be demoralizing, and slow us down. They’ll be compelled to kill us or die trying. He’s done it before,” Claire said. Bonnie blinked aghast.

“Oh my God,” she muttered under her breath.

“So you, witch, are going to get over yourself and do what you have to do,” Damon snipped with ire. He glared at her and she glared back stubbornly. Damon had had as much of Bonnie’s judgmental crap as he could take tonight and he was already on edge with the lives of both the women he loved hanging in the balance.

“Yeah, he meant that as a question with a ‘please’ on the end,” Stefan interjected.

“Absolutely,” Damon said.

Bonnie sighed roughly, obviously not happy with the situation but she relented far more easily than Elena had, more practical. No, Damon thought, not practical. She relented only because Elena was Alexander’s captive and they had to go through the minions to get to her. If it had been one of them in there, they’d be shit out of luck. Unless it was Stefan. She’d have made an exception for him.

“Plus there’s a good chance Alexander has a pet witch in there,” Damon added, wincing in preparation for the burst of fiery indignation he figured would be coming.

“What?” Bonnie spat.

“Did I forget to mention that?” Damon said casually. Bonnie gaped at him, then she drew herself up and took a deep breath. Yep, she was mad. Oh well. Life’s a bitch.

“Fine. But we try to save as many as we can,” Bonnie said. Damon didn’t bother to argue that saving the humans Alexander had compelled was pretty much a lost cause. Why bother? Claire rolled her eyes, impatiently.

“I’m going,” she announced and started to sprint for the front door and Jacob Miller. Damon grabbed her.

“So you can go in alone and try to pull some harebrained scheme?” Damon said fiercely. Claire wrenched away from him, taking a step backward and glowered. “I’ll do it.” Damon turned to go. Claire seized him.

“So you can do the same thing?” Claire countered. Damon cast her a side long glance.

“ _I’ll_ do it,” Stefan said exasperated. They looked at where he was but he was already gone, a blur racing over the field. He snatched Jacob off the stoop, a hand clamping over the man’s mouth so he wouldn’t scream. Stefan sped back to them, hauling a squirming Jacob Miller with him. The man’s green eyes blazed angrily over Stefan’s hand instead of in fear as he should have been if he had any sense. Compulsion would do that for you. He was whatever Alexander wanted him to be.

The little knot of rescuers spread out encircling Stefan and Jacob. Stefan released his hold on the man’s head and turned him to face him, catching the man’s eyes. He had the power to compel him and make it stick with the human blood he’d drank.

“Do you know who we are?” Stefan asked.

“Yes,” Jacob hissed.

“Okay, good. We need you to let us in the house,” Stefan said, eyes constantly locked with Jacob’s. Stefan was still going to try finding a loophole. Damon sighed. His little brother, ever the hero.

“He said I couldn’t let anyone in,” Jacob said robot-like. “No one gets in.”

Stefan grimaced. “Does anyone else live on the property? Wife? Children? Anyone?”

Damon knew what he was hoping. That someone else held entry rights to the property. If they did, that person could let them in and they could bypass killing Jacob.

Jacob shook his head. “No. It’s just me.”

Stefan gritted his teeth and shook his head. No way out but to kill him now. Compelled he’d never invite them in and they couldn’t get around it.  Stefan wavered. He knew what he had to do but he didn’t want to.

Claire snatched his indecision out from under him. “Told you,” she said as she reached up from behind Jacob and in a flash snapped his neck without any effort at all. He flopped to the ground, dead.

“You killed him! You could have compelled him!” Bonnie spat horrified and angry.

“Doesn’t work that way,” Claire said mildly.  “Besides,” she added, toeing the body so it wobbled limply. Bonnie turned green. “I’ve killed two other people in Elena’s defense tonight. What’s a few more?”

Bonnie’s eyes got very large. Damon wasn’t sure if she was angry and horrified at the implication or shocked that Claire had killed people to protect Elena. It didn’t faze Damon a bit.

Stefan was looking at the leaves around his feet in either guilty embarrassment that Claire had done what he hesitated to or in shame that he knew it was the only thing that could be done.

“Tick tock,” Claire said stepping over Jacob’s corpse.

She wasted no time but started to move toward the house. Bonnie gave Jacob Miller a sad look but followed and Stefan turned to join them. Damon trotted to catch up, snagging Claire by the arm. Claire pulled with a vampire’s speed from his grasp but she stopped. Keeping a pace between them. Damon winced. She was wary he’d try to snap her neck again as he done in Chicago.

This was it. This was the final showdown. Somebody was going to die in a minute and at least one of them was going to be among the dead. They couldn’t possibly all get out alive. He had to say something. He couldn’t just walk in there, knowing he was going to make sure it was him who bit it and not say something to Claire in parting. He had no idea what the hell to say given the circumstance though.

 _‘Say what you already know. Say what you keep trying to deny_ ,’ his conscience nagged him as the tugging pulled at him again, right about where his heart was, more urgently than ever. _‘For all you love Elena, it’s Claire who calls you home, completes you. Makes you feel alive. It’s Claire who you missed so desperately you turned off your humanity. It’s Claire you were adamantly trying to set up a possible life with when this is all over. It’s her you belong to, as she belongs to you.’_

 _‘But I don’t deserve her. I don’t deserve either of them,”_ he said back to it plaintively.

Damon swallowed and took a step toward her. She stepped backward a pace. “Claire, I…,” he started trying to find words. He couldn’t say what was in his heart. He wanted to. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her. That he couldn’t bear to lose her. But she knew he loved Elena too and God what was he supposed to say?

“Damon,” Claire said warningly.

“I just have to say something,” Damon insisted fervently. What did he have to say? He couldn’t even come up with words to spit out and he was professing he had to say something? This felt like Chicago all over again. Something twisted and pulled taut inside him.

“Don’t go there,” Claire said shaking her head slightly and backing up another step. It hurt that she kept deliberately distancing herself from him. Stefan and Bonnie had paused, looking back at them, expressions of sad empathy on their faces. Damon wished he and Claire could be doing this away from prying eyes, but this was it, it was now or never.

“When all this is over, you can tell me whatever it is if you want to. Otherwise, I don’t need to know. I don’t want to know. I can’t know,” Claire said and there was such a deep well of doubt, anguish and pain that Damon flinched. She was fighting so hard not give in to what Alexander wanted. To not turn it off. Holding on by force of will alone.

He wanted to argue with her but he didn’t dare. He wouldn’t push her over the edge of the precipice she was standing on but there would be no second chance. There was no time. No opportunity for apology or explanation. No last kiss goodbye. Only a thousand regrets and might have beens.

“Sure, of course,” he agreed, his gaze falling, though he didn’t mean it. There wasn’t going to be an ‘after’. He’d be dead because he wasn’t going to let his brother, Elena or Claire die and the chances he could do that and not get himself killed in the process were pretty much nil. But, he’d caused her enough pain, made choices that hurt her too many times. He wouldn’t press for what he didn’t deserve only to hurt her more. He didn’t know what he was going to say anyway.

‘ _Yes you do_ ,’ his psyche taunted him. Damon ignored it and changed the subject. “You know this is a trap?”

“Of course it is,” Claire said. “He’s not going to make this easy. We knew that.”

“Yeah,” Damon said with a tight nod. “You sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure,” Claire said.

“You know we’re not all going to survive this,” Damon said slightly desperate to convince Claire to stay out of it even if he couldn’t _make_ her stay out of it.

“It’s Elena,” Claire reasoned and those words broke Damon’s heart in two all over again. That summed it up didn’t it? Two words were all the explanation any of them needed. Damon’s features pinched with pain. She was doing this for Elena, for him as much as for herself. No. He didn’t deserve her. _‘But you need her,’_ his conscience pointed out.

Claire gave him a sad smile. “I’ll be fine.”

“I can’t lose you both,” Damon said softly. Something jerked painfully in Damon’s chest. _‘But you will lose one of them,’_ his conscience warned him. _‘No, I won’t,’_ he seethed back. 

“You won’t,” Claire promised, flashing him that bittersweet smile again. There she went again, making promises to him and he couldn’t even keep one to get a simple daylight ring out of Bonnie. Right that second Damon hated Bonnie with every fiber of his being. He hated himself more. There was no talking Claire out of this, Damon’s nose wrinkled in upset and his lips thinned as he pressed them tighter, fighting the urge to do what he wanted to anyway.

 He sighed. “Okay. Then you and I will take the front and Stefan and Bonnie, you two take the back.”

He had to just focus on the plan. Otherwise, he was going to grab Claire, say something irretrievably stupid, do something dumber than he ever had and only hurt her more in the process. He just knew it.

“How about Stefan and I take the back and you and Bonnie go in the front,” Claire said. Damon’s shoulders slumped a centimeter or two. She wouldn’t even go in with him because she feared he’d disable her at the last moment. Not that he hadn’t considered it seriously.

“Works for me,” Damon said with a forced grin. He stepped to Bonnie’s side and held out his hand for her. She looked at him apprehensively but took it, clutching it tightly. They all lined up like racers on the starting line, bodies hovering low for the push off.

 _‘Here we go,’_ Damon thought fearfully. What he said aloud was “Nobody get killed.” They looked at each other and nodded. He glanced at Bonnie. “Hold on,” he advised.

They moved, four streaks in the dark.


	12. Chapter 12

Every sense on alert, Damon barreled through the front door of the Meeting House, sending the door flying off its hinges and across the room. Stefan and Claire echoed him on the opposite side of the wide expanse, the back door careening into the room like a missile.

There were three men waiting for them who had to duck to avoid being hit by the airborne doors, among them Jack Sheppard, the last of Alexander’s abductees. The other two were a tremendously large Japanese guy who must have been a sumo wrestler in a former life and a black man with arms the size of beer kegs and a face only a mother could love. To Damon’s relief and delight, there wasn’t a witch in sight. This part would be a cakewalk.

Both fireplaces blazed to the right and left of him, cords of wood readily stacked beside them to keep them going. There was a pile of bricks next to one of them where the face of the fireplace had begun to crumble and someone had dutifully swept them aside so it could still be used.

There was no furniture in the room. It was completely open, the bare weathered wood beneath their feet yawning before them in a moisture warped grey playing field. The wallpaper on the walls was peeling, hanging like bits of tattered shroud and in a few places you could see clean through to the studs because it had rotted and fallen away.

The only thing taking up any floor space was the stairs. The ‘L’ or ‘Winder’ Stairs jutted from one wall, crammed into a corner almost as an afterthought before turning back on itself to reach for the second floor above them. The thick, single hung paned glass windows that gave the room any sense of not being stuck in a rotting box were so smudged and dirty that anything outside was indiscernible. Some of the panes had been broken, shards gleaming in the firelight like grimy vicious teeth.

The Meeting House had stood with no repair for decades. Time was disintegrating it as termites and other creepy crawlies ate their way through it. The smell of decay, mold and mildew was pervasive.

The would-be rescuers appeared to be largely unarmed but that was misleading. Hidden in Damon’s ubiquitous leather jacket were a vervain grenade and a vervain dart. Covered by his right sleeve was a wrist sheath that ran from wrist to elbow, loaded with slim stakes that launched under pressure at the wearer’s command. Claire was outfitted the same way, though hers were hidden by her loose sweater.  Stefan had had to settle for a real stake, which he now had wielded in one hand, since they had only two of the wrist sheaths, but he had a vervain dart and a vervain grenade hidden on his person somewhere as well. Bonnie carried no weapons. She didn’t need them, she had magic enough to down ten vampires.

Damon lamented that all the really cool weapons Alaric possessed were in his loft or with him, where ever he was. Damon would have loved to come busting through the door with Alaric’s homemade stake gun or his flamethrower along with Alaric himself. But they had to work with what they had.

All this Damon took in with his heightened senses, in the time it took for the shattered doors to arc through the air and clatter to the floor.

“Knock, Knock,” Damon snarked. Bonnie was safely behind him, out of harm’s way for the moment as they figured out what they’d walked into. There was no point in being quiet about it Alexander had been expecting them, they’d lost the element of surprise long ago.

He could hear ‘Ave Maria’ sung in Claire’s voice in the distinct tinny rasp of a phonograph recording permeating the air like a perverse funeral dirge. He glanced at her across the room, she heard it too. They all did. Stefan’s forehead wrinkled and his thick brows pinched. But Claire was swallowing rapidly, her hands clenching and unclenching, her jaw set so hard that he could see the muscle flex in an attempt to control her needled anger.

Damon looked up at the ceiling with its deeply cracked plaster. The sound was coming from above them where no doubt Alexander waited for them with Elena. They had to hope they weren’t too late. “Now that’s just petty,” he muttered, worried about Claire’s mental state. She seemed calm, in control. But how long would it last?

Alexander was trying to undermine them from within and without, chip away at the little plot of stable mental ground Claire was still standing on so she’d succumb to the need to make her emotions stop and make a dig at Damon all at once. He was surprised it wasn’t ‘Bye Bye Black Bird’ playing.

It took only a moment for the three goons to recover, standing straight again and bringing handguns to bear on the three vampires. One compelled human per vampire. Sad odds really. They fired and the vampires broke to avoid the wooden bullets like they’d been thrown from a sling shot in different directions, moving at vampire speed in a twisting and turning path around the perimeter of the room so fast they were nothing but three technicolor blurs. All they had to do was keep the goons’ attention on them long enough for Bonnie to put them out of commission.

They were fast but the goons were firing wildly as rapidly as they could pull the trigger, intent on emptying the magazines and hoping that some of the bullets hit. There were sharp barks and yelps as some of the bullets found their mark. Damon felt a bullet rip through his shoulder and yelled.

Bonnie strode through the door like something out of a bad B-Movie, arm extended before her, eyes narrowed in anger and concentration, her chin held high with arrogant power. The air instantly became thicker, the feeling of magic riding the air like a living current. With a sweep of her arm, all three humans were picked up and thrown like toys to crash into the walls. Rotted wood cracked and crumbled on impact, raining down on them like ash.

Damon staggered to a halt, bleeding from more than one bullet wound, panting and holding his wounded shoulder to cast a pleased grin at Bonnie. Claire and Stefan had halted too, both punched full of holes but none truly disabling. None of the bullets had hit anything major. It would weaken them though. But instead of grinning at Bonnie, Damon’s head exploded with pain and he howled. Around him, Claire and Stefan were screeching too. All three of them hit the floor clutching their heads in excruciating pain, feeling like their brains were on fire, their ears filled with a squeal only they could hear, pitched so high their ear drums felt like they would rupture.

For a second Damon furiously thought Bonnie had betrayed them and was disabling them to protect Alexander’s compelled human attack dogs for fear the vampires would kill them, but then a lithe figure came out from behind the narrow space between the wall and where the stairs were with her arm extended, finger splayed as she exerted her power. Alexander had a witch after all.

Damon mentally castigated himself for not thinking that someone might be in the narrow space. It had been one of Stefan’s favorite hiding places as a boy, only large enough to accommodate a single person but deep enough to hide them from view completely unless you went in yourself.

The witch was taller than Bonnie with caramel skin to Bonnie’s latte and a good ten years older, though as a witch she might be thirty years older and wouldn’t look it. Witches could slow but not stop the aging process if they chose. Her teeth as she smiled snidely down at them on the floor, in Damon’s expert, skull splitting opinion, made her look like a donkey.  But maybe that was just the massive headache talking.

She stepped over Stefan’s squirming body and Bonnie glared at her.

“Stop it,” Bonnie demanded. The woman gave her a lopsided grin as the three goons picked themselves up off the floor and hurried over to the three vampires who were much too preoccupied with their pain stricken heads to do anything but writhe in agony and wail.

“Make me,” the woman intoned smugly.

Bonnie flicked her wrist and sent the goons skidding back to their places against the wall and away from the vampires. The woman looked back at them with a finely arched brow raised.

“Impressive,” she said.

“There’s more where that came from. Let them go,” Bonnie demanded again.

“Just kill her,” Damon squawked from his spot on the floor. The woman grimaced and clenched her outstretched hand and sent a whole new and more intense wave of pain through all their heads. Damon, Claire and Stefan screamed.

“You be quiet,” the woman instructed mildly.

Bonnie held the goons in place as the other witch kept the vampires busy twisting around on the floor in pain. They couldn’t do anything to help. This was all on Bonnie. Though the instant the spell that made them all keep having aneurysm after aneurysm broke Damon vowed he was going to rip that smug witch bitch’s heart out while she watched.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Bonnie said reasonably. Damon would have been cursing her if he hadn’t been blind with pain. ‘Just kill the bitch!’ he wanted to scream again.

“Bonnie Bennett, servant of nature,” the woman said with a dark slick chuckle. “Descendant of the illustrious Emily Bennett. I’ve heard about you.”

“You serve nature too,” Bonnie tried again while Damon fervently wished she would get over her ‘servant of nature, protector of all that is human’ mantra and _just kill the bitch_. “Why are you helping Alexander? Don’t you know what he is?”

Somehow, Claire had managed to writhe her way, screaming and groping at her head in agony, closer to Damon’s feet, like an epileptic snake that was trying to inch across a floor. “Bonnie,” Claire gasped desperately. Stefan was in the fetal position ragged moans escaping him.

“Oh I know,” the woman said. ‘And,’ she motioned absently with her free hand to the squirming vampires then to herself, ‘Pot,” and finally to Bonnie, “Kettle.”

 “Let them go. I have the power of a hundred witches, you can’t beat me,’ Bonnie said rather haughtily. Damon was beyond mentally berating her for her arrogance, right now all he could think about was his brain on fire.

The other witch’s mouth twisted into an evil grin. “Let’s test that theory.” She raised her other hand towards Bonnie and Bonnie’s stance widened, her eyes shut for an instant as she called more power to stave off Alexander’s witch. Wind started blowing around the room violently with a roar.

“You can’t hurt me. The spirits won’t let one witch harm another,” Bonnie said resolutely.

Alexander’s witch chortled darkly. “The spirits don’t control me. I serve no one,” she said. “Allow me to _express_ myself,” she added as if it were her own private joke and twisted her hand in the air.

Bonnie gasped in pain, tears springing to her eyes. She began muttering something in a stuttering litany in that witchy speech of hers. A counter spell. The other witch reeled back a few steps and then concentrated harder but the one she had on the vampires held. In fact, it seemed to get worse than ever before as if she wanted to be sure they stayed down while she tussled with Bonnie.

Both witch’s hair whipped in the fierce unnatural wind and the house began to shake with the force of magic battling magic. Bonnie looked panicked and shocked that the other witch could hold her own against her. She grimaced and redoubled her efforts on her opponent but doing so made her lose her grasp on the human goons.

The instant she did, they scrambled to their feet, racing for the wriggling and howling vampires. Damon, Claire and Stefan were helpless to stop them. Briefly, Damon had the horrible notion that they would kill them all while Bonnie was busy facing off against the other witch. That they’d all die before they’d even put up a fight. His tortured gaze fell on Claire and Stefan twitching more than anything now, ravaged by their brains rupturing repeatedly. He had to do something. Weakly he tried to move and couldn’t. But to his surprise when he was seized by Jack Sheppard and flipped around like a sack of potatoes, the man’s hands roved over him in search of something as the other two did the same to Stefan and Claire. Efficiently and quickly, they manhandled the three around on the floor like feebly kicking, bleating, wounded deer, hands patting and groping their clothes as one by one, they started stripped them of their weapons.

“Bon..nie,” Stefan gasped weakly, pleadingly. If Bonnie didn’t stop the witch torturing them soon they’d all be unconscious…or insane from pain. _‘Or,’_ Damon thought, _‘we’ll be dead.’_ Because he honestly didn’t know if they could survive the onslaught they were under. He’d been mind whammied many a time and by some of the strongest witches he’d ever seen but none of them compared to this. Where had Alexander gotten a witch with that kind of power?

Alexander’s witch struck back at Bonnie, thrusting her hand forward violently as if she were driving something into her. Bonnie gave a pained yell and looked up through her hair, furious. Then she did the same thing, shouting words that were lost on the wind along with the vampires screams before they ever reached Damon’s ears.

It would have been hilariously funny to watch with all the over dramatic hand waving if he weren’t squirming on the floor in burning pain as Jack Sheppard divested him of all his weapons. The others had stripped Stefan and Claire of theirs as well, if any of them had any left Damon was too feebleminded to know it. The goons tossed them all into the blazing fire nearby and to Damon’s utter astonishment then ejected their wood bullet magazines, tossed them in and followed it with their guns. Now _no one_ was armed. He’d have wondered what the hell that meant if his brain wasn’t a searing pulped mess.

Faintly Damon almost swore he heard Elena call Stefan’s name then his and Claire’s in fearful desperation. But he wasn’t sure he wasn’t delusional at this point. Everything had started to take on a surreal quality, like moving under water.  He cast a weak look at Bonnie. There was blood trickling from her nose as if she were exerting too much power, wielding too much at once, her focus narrowed only to one thing. Stop the other witch before she killed all of them.

Alexander’s witch screamed once in pain and Damon thought the tide was going to turn as Bonnie flung everything into the spell she was casting. The fires in the fireplaces rose higher in response to the gout of power she was calling, casting the room in an orange-red glow. The human goons looked at each other fearfully. Guess Alexander hadn’t compelled them to deal with this. But the other witch refused to be beaten, she snarled and flung her arm to the side and back again. Everything happened so quickly it was a blur, even to Damon.

The witch had used her power, taking it off Bonnie, to pick up a brick by the fireplace while Bonnie was focused on her. The brick careened through the air and hit Bonnie in the temple. She dropped like a stone. Not even magic could stop a lowly physical attack out of nowhere.  The wind died out instantly and the fires quelled, though they still burned as before.

Alexander’s witch gestured at Bonnie’s prone body and it bowed off the floor as if it were a puppet on strings. Damon could hear bones snapping, blood gurgled from the little witch’s mouth. The witch was going to kill Bonnie. But switching between offenses had caused the witch to lose her grip on Damon, Stefan and Claire. Some of the pain ebbed but he wasn’t free. Damon tried to move weakly. Stefan lifted limbs trying to get his coordination back. But Claire was completely free.

She was up off the ground and on the witch in a flash with a ferocious roar. The humans sprang for make shift weapons, fingers tearing at firewood and the cast off doors in search of a splinter to keep a vampire at bay. But Claire’s attention was solely for Alexander’s witch. The witch turned intending to mind whammy her again but it was too late, Claire jerked her off her feet, snapped her head back and sank her fangs viciously into the woman’s throat with a feral growl. The instant she did, the spell broke completely, freeing Damon and Stefan.

The humans descended on he and his brother, and Damon lost sight of Claire as he flung himself into the fray with what little strength he had left. The humans were pathetically ill equipped with their bits of wood against two wounded but seriously pissed vampires. Stefan snapped one’s neck and Damon broke the another’s spine. The third, Jack Sheppard, sprinted for Stefan, intending to drive his hastily gained bit of wood into Stefan’s back. Damon snatched him in mid-run thrusting his hand through the man’s torso and pulling his heart out in one motion. Jack Sheppard stumbled another step or two, looked at Damon in astonishment as his ‘stake’ dropped from his hand and keeled over. Damon tossed the man’s heart aside.

Meanwhile, Claire brutally tore out the witch’s throat, swallowing her blood in great gouts. She was the reason for the damage Claire had sustained, it was fitting that her blood heal it. Drained dry, Claire let the witch’s body fall from her grasp and scrambled to Bonnie. She pulled the girl’s body to her, it flopped in the wrong ways and there was a thick stream of blood coming from her temple where the brick had stuck her but Claire could hear a wet choking sound. Bonnie blinked at her dully, her mouth opening as if to speak but unable to. She was dying.

Quickly Claire bit her own wrist and pressed it to Bonnie’s lips. “Drink,” she commanded hoarsely. The blood from Alexander’s witch would heal her but it was going to take a moment, plus she had to get the wooden bullets out before they’d heal and the mind whammy had done a number on them all that had stolen most of her strength. But right now, Bonnie needed help.

Bonnie weakly obeyed, knowing what Claire was doing. Claire’s blood would heal her though she wasn’t much in the position to be giving any of it away. Bonnie drank, her hand coming up to clutch Claire’s wrist shakily. Her eyes widened in surprise, she gasped softly and stopped drinking. She’d had enough to heal her anyway. It didn’t take much only a mouthful or two. Claire took her wrist away. Now as long as no one killed her in the next twenty-four hours she’d be fine. Otherwise there’d be one more vampire in Mystic Falls.

“Oh my God,” Bonnie whispered still too frail to fight Claire. “No, you can’t…,” she pleaded. Claire winced. Bonnie had touched her and seen what was in her head. Damn witches and their visions. It was what Claire had been avoiding by not shaking the young witch’s hand when she met her.

“I wish you hadn’t seen that,” Claire said quietly. Quiet enough Damon wouldn’t hear as he recovered from his own struggle. She smiled regretfully and pressed her thumb to the girl’s neck.

“Claire,” Bonnie murmured in desperation, clutching at her horror-stricken.

“All a part of the plan,” Claire whispered. “Can’t let Elena lose her best friend now can I?”

Bonnie struggled feebly for an instant as Claire bore down on the vagus nerve, then her eyes rolled back in her head as she passed out. Only then did Claire let the witch slip gently back to the floor in deep unconsciousness and then slumped with a thud to lie supine beside Bonnie, spent and panting as her strength gave out on her.

Simultaneously, Damon’s strength left him now that they were out of danger for the moment and his legs buckled. Stefan was in no better shape; he crumbled to the ground in a limp heap nearly on top of the man whose neck he’d just snapped. Damon, being a pragmatist, crawled over to his kill. It was the behemoth Japanese guy, the man’s back was broken but he wasn’t quite dead yet, Damon could hear his heart still sluggishly trying to keep him from dying. Damon wasted no time tearing into the man’s throat and drained the last bit of life from him to replenish his own.

Stefan, reluctantly did the same to the black man whose neck he’d broken. Drinking just enough to get the job done, that or it was all Stefan could get before death claimed him. Damon knew he did it only because Elena’s life still hung in the balance, risking succumbing to his human bloodlust to save the girl he loved. Stefan’s hypocrisy came into full bloom the minute something threatened Elena, giving in to what he was because it would grant him the edge he needed to save her. Damon almost snorted in disdain and Claire’s words echoed in his throbbing ears. _‘It won’t change what he is. Only what he does.’_ They were all of them bloodsucking murderous vampires in the end, even Saint Stefan.

 ‘Ave Maria’ was still friggin’ playing.

“Claire?” Damon called concerned because she was flat on the floor and not moving, neither was Bonnie. Irrational images of Claire, corpse gray, her veins protruding in grotesque silhouette on her skin invaded his head. Had the witch had some sort of stake they hadn’t seen and staked Claire at the last second? A wooden bullet that he hadn’t heard fired? One with enough breadth and width would kill a vampire if you hit the heart. Some witchy juju last stand crap he didn’t know about? He hefted himself up some and dug his fingers into his shoulder wound to pry out the bullet. He wasn’t going to be able to do anything until he was mobile.

Claire’s hand flopped in response to indicate something resembling life. “Still living dead,” she rasped. Damon gave a dry chuckle. Fighting gave Claire a snarky sense of humor. Nonetheless, Damon breathed a sigh of relief and his heart rate slowed nominally. However nonchalantly he played it, he’d been scared for a moment there.

 _‘You can’t save them both. One of you is going to die doing this,’_ his conscience taunted him warningly and that feeling in his gut twisted his insides again, pulling and tugging.

“Bonnie?” Stefan asked pulling a bullet out of his thigh.

“Out cold but fine,” Claire said with a groan as she sat up and started digging one of the bullets out of her arm. Her face was smeared with witch blood.

“Thank God,” Stefan muttered grimacing and gouging into his thigh for one of the bullets embedded there.

Damon flicked the bullet he’d retrieved from his flesh away from him and looked at Alexander’s dead witch. Her large dark eyes stared into space, an expression of startled surprise still emblazed on her face even in death. There was nothing at all left of the woman’s throat. Claire had viciously torn it out; it looked like it was attached by only a thread of sinew. Messy and animalistic even for Claire and a chill went down Damon’s spine. She’d nearly ripped the witch’s head off. Like Stefan when he was in Ripper mode. Except Claire wasn’t remorseful about it in the least.

“You couldn’t have just broken her neck?” Damon asked working on another bullet. Claire shrugged half-heartedly.

“It certainly occurred to me,” she said, “but this just seems more poetic.” She yelped as a bullet came free with an audible pop and then thumped it into the shadows.

Damon gave a snorting dark laugh. “Waste not, want not,” he replied, he had to agree that there was something ironically poetic about the witch who’d had them writhing on the floor having her throat ripped out by one of them. It garnered him a ragged chortle from Claire.

Much as the brutality Claire killed with, Damon had to admit that some small part of him, liked it. He enjoyed fighting alongside someone who liked killing as much as he did, who despite their beginnings relished being a vampire as much as he did and it was all justified. No guilt for later. And to add to that Claire had as black a sense of humor as he did about it.

Stefan threw deprecating looks at them both, his eyes noting the same nearly decapitated corpse as Damon. He shot Damon a brooding glance that Damon could only shrug at. What could he say?

Despite her brutal killing of the witch Claire was surprisingly calm. She hadn’t made a mad dash straight up the stairs after Alexander. She hadn’t blindly went into a rage and done something stupid as Damon had expected. He wasn’t going to argue one mauled witch in the scheme of things.

That was the extent of their very brief conversation. They didn’t dare say anything else aloud, Alexander would hear every word they said and despite their weakened states they had to move quickly. Finishing plucking the few bullets they’d taken from their bodies they all struggled to their feet. Claire wiped the blood from her mouth with her sleeve. Damon had been far neater and only had to lick his lips clean. Stefan had wiped all incriminating evidence away before he’d even shown his face after feeding. Couldn’t look like what he was now could he?

They shuffled toward each other avoiding bodies and debris in the process and silently took stock of their situation. Damon glanced at the fireplace where the deceased goons had tossed their weapons, including their own guns. Now that his brain wasn’t in a state of constant aneurysm he could reason out why they’d done what they’d done.

They’d destroyed, or made irretrievable by vampire, all weapons even their own because there was never any intention of killing them yet. No, Alexander wouldn’t want that. He wanted to do that himself after he’d had his fun breaking them. It was meant to render Damon, Claire and Stefan weaponless and weakened but still alive. The coward was afraid the three of them in fit form could take him. Even with Elena as a hostage. So he’d hedged his bets. Dick.

Stefan’s gaze followed his and he reached into his perforated jacket, showing Damon that the goons hadn’t gotten _all_ the weapons after all. Stefan still had a vervain grenade. Claire did the same, she still had her wrist sheath and both the slim stakes it harbored. Damon canted his head in chagrin. Jack Sheppard had stripped him of everything he had. Without a thought Claire pulled one of the stakes free and flipped it in her hand, offering it to Damon.

Damon looked at it a moment with reluctance. He didn’t want to take whatever weapons she had left. If anyone was going to die doing this it was going to be him but at the same time until they had Elena out of harm’s way, being unarmed might just be pointless suicide. Claire pushed it on him. He sighed but accepted it, stashing it on his person. He hated this.

Claire could fight. He’d always known that. In fact, he hadn’t known she could fight this well. What _had_ she been doing with Vincent the last eighty years? Moving at all when her brain had been putty under the witch’s spell was a testament to her tenacity but he still wished fervently she was not here. That she was safe and yet, if she weren’t they wouldn’t have the collective strength to stop Alexander (maybe) and save Elena. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

Damon looked up at the ceiling, thinking about their next move. The three dead goons inside and Jacob Miller outside accounted for four out of the six remaining minions Alexander should have had at his disposal. That meant there were two still kicking and Damon was betting they were upstairs with their diabolical master. Claire was looking at the ceiling as well, a line developing between her eyebrows. She winced at the sound of her own voice played back to her but her composure held.

Damon really lamented that now they were down their witch. It would be so much easier if Bonnie wasn’t knocked out. Again Damon wondered where the hell Alexander had gotten a witch that strong. He wasn’t personable enough to have charmed her and a witch with that kind of power wasn’t easily held to forced loyalty by manipulation or coercion either.

But if Katherine had helped Alexander set this up there was a very large chance that the witch was actually Katherine’s on loan to Alexander and had probably made the daylight ring he now wore. A new one to replace the one who’d betrayed her in favor of her cousin, Bonnie at the masquerade. One who had no such familial loyalty. If she wasn’t already dead Katherine would be so pissed when she found out Claire had killed her pet witch. Damon almost wished she wasn’t dead so he could see her reaction. Still, how had the witch even begun to have enough power to compete with Bonnie? Wielding the power of a hundred dead witches was nothing to scoff at.

That question would have to wait for later. Fight and rescue now, speculate after.

The three of them communicated with head jerks, furtive eye motions and pointing fingers. They’d leave Bonnie where she was, safe in her unconsciousness and go after Alexander and his remaining lackeys first. Then, when Elena was safe and Alexander was dead, they’d get both humans out. Assuming Bonnie hadn’t come to by then.  Assuming all of them weren’t dead.

With that they started to move for the stairs. It had taken only seconds for the entire thing to transpire but it felt like long never ending minutes. Time had a habit of feeling like it either sped up exponentially or slowed down to a crawl in situations like this.

Stefan tried to take the lead with Claire behind him and make Damon take up the rear but Damon wasn’t about to let his little brother and Claire put themselves in the most danger. He shouldered past Stefan and gripped the banister, intending to use it to launch himself up the stairs at vamp speed. Instead he jerked his hand back with a yip of pain as his palm sizzled.

He snarled at it. Someone had ‘painted’ it with vervain. Touch it and it would burn you like acid. That was just plain cheap on Alexander’s part. They didn’t need to touch the banister but habit ensured they would. The vervain wasn’t enough to disable any of them just hurt and be incredibly irritating. _‘Degenrate petty dick,’_ Damon thought.

While Damon was seething in agitation, Stefan and Claire went up the stairs anyway, careful to avoid touching the banister. Damon hurried to follow, all of them traveling at the sped only a vampire could.

Damon heard it before either Claire or Stefan did. Maybe because he was closer. As they approached the first landing, the one that led to the switchback in the staircase, something beeped. It only did it once and when he went to look for the source he saw it. Two economy sized pickle jars filled with a faintly yellow fluid and many nails, wedged in the balusters below them, thin wires snaking from the lids and under one of the stair’s treads. Vervain bombs. The son of a bitch had booby trapped the staircase.

Damon moved. He couldn’t stop it from going off, they’d already tripped the firing mechanism. If it hit them they’d all be severely weakened. Alexander would be able to collect them and do whatever he liked.

In a split second he made the decision about which way to go. Putting on a burst of speed he tackled Claire and Stefan who had turned back at the sound of the beep and shoved them for the landing, away from the bombs. He couldn’t go back the way they’d come, they’d be caught directly in the blast.

They all hit the ground in a tangled thud as the pickle jars exploded, sending nails, vervain and glass in all directions. Because they were above the explosion, they avoided most of it. Though the blast took out part of the banister and a couple of the steps.

He was on top of the heap so it was Damon who took the damage, yelling as some of the vervain drenched nails and glass pierced through his leather jacket and lodged in his back. Thankfully, Damon had been purposefully building a resistance to vervain for this very reason so the effect was as minimal as it could be.

With a pained grunt Damon rolled off his lover and his brother, careful to land on his side so he wouldn’t drive any of the nails in any further. Claire hastily disentangled herself from Stefan and slid to Damon’s side. She immediately started pulling the bits of glass and nails out with no regard for finesse. The longer they were in the more of the vervain would get into Damon’s system.

Damon yelped as she jerked a nail out with a twist to get it free.

“Don’t be a baby,” Claire snipped. Damon looked up at her, her eyes were dark with worry and Damon couldn’t help the warm thrill that flooded through him that he couldn’t blame on the vervain.  She pulled a piece of glass out and Damon grunted. “You’re a butcher,” he muttered with a rough snicker.

“You’re welcome,” Claire said shortly and Damon looked at her oddly. She was angry not just worried.

She was mad at him for taking the brunt of the explosion in her sted but if she’d been caught in it she’d be far more injured than Damon. Stefan had righted himself and moved to help but Damon only had eyes for Claire. There was something about the look in her eyes that made his heart break and soar all at the same time and something quelled warningly inside him again.

“Look at you,” Damon muttered darkly amused, “all ‘Florence Nightingale’.” The quip reminded him sharply of the daylight ring he’d been unable to get Bonnie to make. Damon’s face pinched regretfully.

Claire snorted and pulled a last nail out. Stefan had made quick work of the rest, aiding her. “There,” she said her face impassive. But pain and sorrow flashed in the depths of her eyes and for one second Damon and Claire shared a moment, looking at each other battle scarred and bloody.

‘Ava Maria’ still thrummed through the air eerily and he morbidly recalled the notion that somewhere he’d once heard that the nightingale he kept euphemistically comparing Claire to, didn’t just sing death away as in the ‘Emperor and the Nightingale’. In some myths it sang as an omen of death or sang its most beautiful song just before giving it’s life for love. He had no idea why that occurred to him just then.

Damon couldn’t say what it was they shared in that moment, he almost had a grasp on a word for it when Stefan dragged him up by his arm. Solider on brave vampire.

Stefan let go of him as soon as he knew Damon had his feet and trekked on, Claire turned to follow leaving Damon again at the end of the tattered train of rescuers. Why did he feel like that was deliberate? That the two of them had some unspoken agreement Damon didn’t know about? But that wasn’t possible. Not as if they could communicate by telepathy. This wasn’t _‘Twilight’_. Damon laughed at himself, the idea was ludicrous.

They made their way at normal speed up the last stairs. No sense in accidently triggering a trap and if there was one there was likely more. What kind of man wasn’t vampire enough to do his dirty work himself (mostly) but instead resorted to booby traps and preferred chloroform over compulsion? Alexander was a ball of terribly screwed up insane contradictions.

Stefan was concentrated on looking where the last one had been, studiously looking over the balusters for any other traps. Claire watched above them and Damon watched the midline.

So it was, when they reached the final landing, which deposited them right on threshold of the only interior door in the Meeting House, that Stefan didn’t see his impending doom and neither did Damon.

“Stefan!” Claire cried.

Stefan stopped, looked back. But it was too late. There was a dull twang followed by a low whoosh. Damon and Stefan looked up. Four crossbows, two to either side, were mounted next to the ceiling with wooden arrows. There was no way Stefan could move before one of the four got him and they were aimed at chest height.

Claire was already in motion, faster than Damon could be because she’d seen it first. She rushed Stefan, driving him back into the corner nearest the door and essentially trading places with him.  Damon had to drop back or be skewered and with heart rending dread realized what Claire had done. At the last moment as the bolts whizzed through the air, Stefan shoved her and spun, Claire clutched in his grasp, putting himself in the line of fire. Three of the bolts missed but one sank deeply into his back between shoulder blade and spine, blessedly and narrowly missing a back to front heart shot. The others plunked into the wall and floor harmlessly.

Stefan grunted and grabbed the wall to keep from sliding to the floor and Damon raced to his side. Claire was pinned between the wall and Stefan. She glared  hotly at Damon’s little brother whose only response was a weak wriggle of his eye brows and a tightlipped out of place grin.

Damon pulled the bolt from his brother’s back. Stefan gasped with relieved pain as it was taken out and Claire pushed him away from her still glaring at him. She was obviously angry but something else was there too. She swallowed apprehensively, her eyes looked melancholy and self-deprecating, ashamed. Stefan seemed unfazed by it but Damon’s brow furrowed. Why was she angry with Stefan for what he’d done? He didn’t understand it.

But the moment passed as Stefan rolled his shoulder, his wound closing. He gave Claire a short nod Damon couldn’t decipher and only served to confuse him further. A silent acknowledgment of something. He didn’t like this and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. Something was off.

He didn’t dare say anything however. He knew, though he couldn’t hear it because ‘Ave Maria’ was _still_ playing, over and over, that Alexander, Elena and whatever minions Alexander had left were behind the door in front of them. The music kept them from hearing how many or what was going on inside the room, so maybe Alexander’s petty dig with it served a practical purpose after all. They’d survived round one and two. This was round three… winner take all.

Damon had a rare moment of utter indecision. On this side of the door, trembling, strung tight as a wire and cagey as a trapped panther was one dark haired love, and beyond it, captured and in imminent danger, was the other. For an instant, he had to fight the urge to use the confined space of the landing to his advantage and snap Claire’s neck so she couldn’t step through that door. Would she lose it when she saw Alexander? Would she rush him in a blind rage and get both herself and Elena killed? Would they both die? Damon felt his heart clench with something he rarely felt anymore. Fear.

“No!” he heard Elena cry fearfully and that pulled him out of his moment of confliction. As one, the three of them turned and bolted for the door. Weakened by the last two rounds or not, he and Stefan more than Claire, they still had to save Elena. Somehow, Stefan and Claire managed to get through the door before him much to Damon’s alarmed consternation. But what lay beyond it made everything turn upside down.

It all happened in one blinding flash as the door swung inward and fell off its hinges.

There were two goons still left, just as Damon had thought. One on either side of the room and armed with handguns, which had to contain wooden bullets, and stakes. Both fireplaces blazed high and bright but Damon didn’t see the gas cans waiting beside them because what lay in the center of the room filled him with pained dread. Elena, still in her party dress, her lip bruised and split, wrists bound in iron shackles above her and turning her head back and forth frantically despite the fact Alexander had one hand wound in her hair to avoid the other hand, which was dripping blood and headed for her tightly clamped mouth.

He was going to turn her in front of them.

Chaos reigned.

Claire blew through the room faster than Damon had ever seen her move as the three vampires split apart and did the one thing Damon feared. She headed unerringly straight for Alexander, stake raised. The two goons drew down on Damon and Stefan. Stefan reached the one on his side first amid a hail of wooden bullets that sent both Salvatores ducking and dodging. Claire didn’t seem to notice or care that she was dashing through the crossfire. Stefan grabbed his target and Damon almost reached his as Claire bodily slammed into Alexander, getting him away from Elena who was calling for Stefan plaintively and with deep relief. The cavalry was here! Yay! Except…

The instant Claire engaged Alexander he rounded on her. Neatly taking her stake away from her and twisting the arm that had held it with a wet snap behind her. Stefan, now freshly full of wooden bullets, as was Damon, wrestled with the white guy on his side of the room. Claire yelled as her arm broke and Alexander whirled her around, her back to his chest.

Damon was about to disarm his own compelled human, the Latino one that kept resetting that damn record on the phonograph. Stefan, wounded but still operational snapped his attackers neck but not before he had managed to drive his stake into Stefan’s stomach. The world stood still.

“Stop!” Alexander commanded. “Or she dies.”

Damon froze, the Hispanic man’s gun arm clutched in his hand and furiously wanting to rip his head off as the man raised his stake arm to try and defend himself. The man had stopped in mid-strike, paused like a film frame. Alexander had Claire clutched to him, her own stake positioned over her heart with one hand while the other was snaked across her upper torso pinning her arms. One backward thrust and Claire was dead. Claire was panting harshly, fangs extended, eyes crimson. Some of the bullets had hit her in her mad dash for Alexander, points of impact blooming scarlet on her clothing. Alexander chuckled deeply, his lips pressed to Claire’s ear.

“That temper of yours always was your downfall. Isn’t that right my pretty little dove?” he murmured. Claire jerked in his grasp, growling and Alexander laughed.

Stefan was paused, mid-movement, the man he’d just snapped the neck of clutched in his grasp and about to be dropped as Stefan’s free hand held his perforated stomach where the man had staked him inefficiently.

Elena was pulled as far forward on her restraints as she could be, making them rattle, as if she meant to try to rush to someone’s aid though Damon didn’t know whose, a look of fearful dismay on her face as her gaze bounced from Stefan, to Damon, to Claire.

Damon’s eyes cut sideways to Alexander and Claire and he gave Claire a look of anguished fury. She’d done what he feared she would, gone rage blind and tackled Alexander the first chance she got consequences be damned. He snarled at Alexander eyes burning with unadulterated hatred.

“Let him go, Damon,” Alexander said looking at the man Damon had been about to kill. Damon glowered, the predator in him unwilling to release something that had attacked him and warring with the knowledge that if he didn’t Alexander would stake Claire before Damon could blink. With a growl Damon reluctantly relented and let go of the man.

“There’s a good boy,” Alexander taunted. Damon seethed.

“You can drop your burden, Stefan,” Alexander said though his eyes stayed locked on Damon. Behind him, Damon heard the sound of a body hitting the floor.

“Martín,” Alexander said, calling the Latino man. He motioned with his chin for him to go to Elena and Damon tensed, his weight shifting from foot to foot. He could hear the scrap against the wooden floor planks as Stefan did the same, muscles bunching ready for a strike.

‘Uh,uh,” Alexander warned, tightening his grip on Claire and in doing so pushing the stake ever closer to her heart. Claire grunted as the tip pressed into her chest.

Damon held his ground much as he itched to move. Martín stepped back from him to obey his master.

“Wait,” Stefan pleaded.

Alexander began to sidle toward Elena, whose face was a rictus of distress, dragging Claire with him, her boot heels scuffing the floorboards as she made it as difficult for him as possible.

Damon held out a staying hand, moving an involuntary step forward. Martín adjusted his grip on his stake. “Let’s talk about this,” Damon tried, eyes flicking from Elena, to Alexander and Claire to Martín as he moved another step.

Martín lunged for him and Damon, reacted leaning backward out of the path of the stake but Alexander jerked the stake he had pressed to Claire’s chest causing her to groan in pain. Alexander made warning ‘ahnt’ sound.

“No, please!” Elena cried, terrified. Damon froze again. Martín thrust the stake into Damon’s abdomen, a quick in and out motion, and sent him to his knees with a bark of pain. The man chuckled darkly flipping the now blood soaked stake in his hand idly and moved to Elena’s side, raising the gun and aiming it at her head. Elena swallowed and looked at the big Hispanic man warily but the man’s face was blank and focused. One word from Alexander and he’d pull the trigger.

A slow smiled spread over Alexander’s youthful face that was so full of triumphant malice it made him look like a grinning demon. “Now this is interesting,” Alexander mocked. He was quite close to Elena now, Close enough he could have touched her shoulder without having to exert himself, both women held at his mercy.

Damon, clutching his stomach, struggled up on one knee. There was no way to move fast enough to save both Elena and Claire. Not even with two to one odds, the human minion notwithstanding. He and Stefan were too weakened.

“Which one do I kill first?” Alexander mused. “Or do I kill this one and turn that one?” he said, motioning from Claire to Elena with his eyes.  “Decisions, decisions.”

“Don’t do this,” Damon pleaded. “You want to kill me, fine. But let them go.”

This was his worst fear. He was going to lose both women he loved.  He was going to watch them both die. His heart seized in his chest.

“Why would I do that?” Alexander asked amused. “This is far more entertaining.”

Damon snarled at him, everything in him urging him to attack Alexander in anger. To cause him as much pain as Alexander wanted to cause Damon.

“Alexander, please,” Stefan begged from behind Damon. “Elena’s not a part of this. Claire…”

“Oh but she is,” Alexander countered. “Damon is in love with her. That automatically makes her a part of it. Don’t do anything stupid. I respect you, Stefan. You don’t take what isn’t yours, unlike your brother. Don’t interfere and I might let you live. Be especially good and maybe I’ll let you have Elena back after I turn her.”

Claire’s face pinched briefly as he said it but her eyes didn’t shift back, she didn’t come down from her predatory flush. Anger was keeping her together. Damon winced in regretful sorrow because it was true. He did love Elena. But he loved Claire too. One didn’t cancel out the other.

“You kill them, you turn Elena and you better kill me because if you don’t I will hunt you down. However long it takes and I will kill you,” Stefan replied with darkly calm vehemence. Alexander’s face became morosely serious.

“So be it,” he said as if he lamented what he was saying. ‘I see why Katherine chose you. You’re an honorable man, Stefan.” Then he turned his attention back to Damon. “So what will it be Damon? Which dies, which lives? Claire? Elena? Or neither one? Your choice.”

Damon’s anguished gaze flicked from Claire to Elena. Alexander wanted him to choose? This was his grand plan? To make him choose who lived or who died and how?

“See that Claire? See it?” Alexander prodded. “Even now, with you centimeters from death he can’t make up his mind. He doesn’t love you.”

“But you do,” Elena said fervently, her eyes flicking back and forth between Alexander and Martin who had a gun to her head with wariness. “You love Claire. You said so. How can you kill her if you love her?” She was trying desperately to sway Alexander’s demented perspective.

“But she never loved me. She betrayed me. She loves _him_ ,” Alexander seethed, shooting a venous look at Damon. “Where did that get you?” Alexander said to Claire, pouring it into her ear with his cheek pressed to her hair like a lover would. “Nowhere. He left you in an alley without a backward glance because he loved Katherine more than you. He can’t choose now because he loves Elena more than you. Or should I say ‘won’t’ because he’s too much of a coward to make the choice in front of you. To let you see it was all a lie. Poor, sweet, beautiful, Claire. You’re never enough for anyone are you?”

“No,” Claire said huskily and swallowed hard but her resolve held. Damon looked up at her from his vantage point on the floor sadly. He didn’t know if she was answering Alexander or refuting him but the result was the same. Alexander was going to break her and he was going to have to watch.  And the worst part was Damon couldn’t argue. It was all true to some degree. All of it.

 _‘Make a choice, Damon. Or lose them both. Watch them die,_ ’ his conscience bit at him. Was that why he couldn’t choose? Was it because Claire wasn’t enough? Was Alexander right and Damon was just a coward who didn’t have the guts to look like what he was?

This was exactly what Alexander had wanted. To hold them captive and break them while the other watched. To kill them body and soul, take everything from them.

“Don’t listen to him, Claire,” Damon pleaded. But her reddened eyes were glossy and he could hear the unsteady way her heart beat in her chest. Alexander was getting to her. And Damon was helpless to stop him. If he so much as moved both Elena and Claire were dead. So what was he supposed to do? Sit here huddled on the floor?

‘ _Choose. You can’t save them both,_ ’ his conscience urged him. But he couldn’t How could he choose? How could he choose to let either of them die?

“Always second best aren’t you? Your parents didn’t want you. They tried to kill you. Your precious Vincent is dead,” he said nodding toward one of the fireplaces where Damon now saw a pile of ash was scattered on the hearth along with the gas can alongside. Vincent’s remains. He’d been killed here while Claire watched. In the heat of the fight, he hadn’t thought of that. Alexander had tortured them both here and then murdered Vincent while she watched, helpless to stop it and Claire had gone back in without a single word of protest, knowing what she’d find.

 _‘See? You don’t deserve her. You aren’t worthy of her,’_ his psyche taunted. Because Alexander wasn’t doing enough all on his own.

Damon was fiercely glad Alexander didn’t seem to know that Vincent had betrayed her on top of it all. That would be one more barb he could use against her. But Claire knew it. Her face contorted painfully, fighting the wash of emotions Alexander was deliberately trying to force to the surface, eyes locking on the pile of ash mournfully.

“Oh God,” Stefan muttered sickened, realizing the same thing.

 “You weren’t enough for him either were you? Always busy with his journals, never understanding you. You were just the substitute for his precious dead daughter. Always telling you what to be, what to do. Because you weren’t what he wanted you to be. Just like your parents did before you became the thing they tried to kill,” Alexander went on in a constant stream. A never-ending litany of every hurt Claire couldn’t shut out. Claire made a whimpering noise. It was incredibly heartrending to hear, the cry of a dying thing.

“Stop it,” Damon pleaded.

“Just like perfect human Elena and honorable Stefan in that alley tonight. So moral, so just. Poking, prodding and digging, trying to make you into the creature they want you to be. It’s no wonder Damon loves Elena more than you is it? You’re nothing but a murderous vampire and her? She’s a shining beacon of humanity and innocence.  Damon doesn’t want you, doesn’t love you. No one ever has. No one but _me_ ,” Alexander prodded viciously.

“That’s a lie! Tell her the truth,” Elena cried jerking against her chains, now decrying Alexander’s claim of love for Claire when a moment ago she’d been trying to use it to change his mind. What the hell? “You didn’t want Claire either. You loved Katherine but she wouldn’t have you. You only took Claire as a second choice because Katherine ‘gave’ her to you to make you leave her alone.”

Damon looked at Elena askance and he could picture his brother’s gaping mouth behind him. No one saw that one coming. Oh, Damon had speculated that Katherine had set Alexander on Claire though he didn’t know why she would and ‘to make Alexander leave her alone’ wasn’t enough of a reason for Katherine to do something like that. And having it confirmed opened up a whole slew of why’s and what for’s that they didn’t have answers to. But that Alexander had been in love with Katherine, that came as a complete surprise.

Claire’s reaction to the news was drastically different than his own. Claire was making a hoarse barking noise that it took a moment for Damon to realize was laughter. Maniacal half-crazed laughter. It was incredibly disturbing with her fangs still out and her eyes red as heart’s blood. The woman Damon had abandoned her for had been the one to get her turned into a vampire in the first place. There was a problem with forcing a vampire to feel everything at once, and while Elena was trying to help, it was just one more thing to cut Claire with. You pushed too much on a vampire all at once in the rapid fire, show no mercy way Alexander was and they either flipped the switch…or went insane. “Why am I not surprised,” she muttered.

“No,” Alexander seethed, ignoring Claire’s mad chuckle. “Katherine loved me. But she was loyal to Stefan. He came first. I respect that.”

Damon couldn’t help the low chortle that issued from his throat. It figured. Somehow that figured. Katherine loved to play games like that. She adored playing on a vampire’s greatest weakness…love.

“Katherine didn’t love you. The only person Katherine loves, or loved because I’m pretty sure Klaus has killed her by now, is herself. She was using you, you moron.”

“No!” Alexander cried enraged. “But Elena is right,” he added with dark humor, turning Elena’s accusation to his own advantage. “I did want Katherine. Claire was just a substitute.” He leaned into Claire again. “So there you have it darling. Katherine gave you to me like a worthless two bit whore. You aren’t enough for anyone. Not your parents, not Vincent, not Elena, not Stefan, not me and certainly not your precious, beloved _Damon_.”

“That’s not true,” Stefan bit from behind Damon.

“Isn’t it though?” Alexander retorted sharply. He looked at Damon enjoying the hell out of the torment he was causing., his eyes were feverish and crazed, his face cracked into a perpetual madman’s grin.

“Did you know after you left her, after Vincent bundled her off to Europe for a decade terrified she was going to flip her switch because of what you did and they came back that she went home?”

Damon looked at him in confusion. He didn’t see where Alexander was going with this.

“That’s right Damon, she went crawling back to ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ to make sure her backstabbing, child killing parents had been buried properly and you know what she found? She’d been erased, like she never existed. No pictures, no records. All of it destroyed. They erased her out of their lives, out of their existence, as if she’d never even been born. What of her father’s family there was left was forbidden to even speak her name. No one wants her, Damon. It’s not just you, no one wants her.”

“Oh god,” Elena muttered sadly from her vantage point nearby.

Damon swallowed convulsively. Not even their vampire hating, control freak, over bearing father had done that. He’d killed them. He’d hated them. But he hadn’t erased them. He’d made sure they were remembered as the innocent civilian casualties of the Battle of Willow’s Creek, too ashamed to admit that they were vampire sympathizers and now vampires themselves. But he hadn’t written them out of existence.

Alexander made Claire look at the pile of ashes that had been Vincent. Shoving her toward them viciously. “There’s dear departed Vincent. Maybe you can keep that, because there’s certainly nothing else left for you.” Alexander cackled. “You have the worst luck with parental figures.”

“Go to hell,” Claire said through clenched teeth. But Damon could tell she was fighting tooth and nail to keep her sanity because she wouldn’t turn it off. She was fighting her inborn instincts, holding on to all she had left. The ability to feel.  The darkened veins around her eyes pulsed and retracted, then flushed again, at constant war with herself.

“Look at him, Claire,” Alexander urged turning her back toward Damon. “He won’t even defend himself. Won’t argue with me. Because he knows it’s true. Not enough, never enough. You’re not worth anyone’s time are you? No one can love you. You don’t deserve to be loved.”

Alexander looked at Damon again, that perverse grin still plastered on his face. He spoke to Claire but the words were aimed at Damon.

“How many windup toys did you have through the years, hm? Twenty, thirty? Compelling them to be perfect little examples of what you’re never going to have. You made them love you but it wasn’t enough was it? Because it wasn’t real. Like the one who was your undoing. What was his name? Jensen? He was delicious by the way.”

“Stop. Please stop,” Elena begged. Damon didn’t know if it was because she couldn’t stand to see Alexander picking Claire apart or if it was because he was using Claire’s moral transgressions to hurt her and horrified by the notion but her plea fell on deaf ears. Alexander was having far too much fun.

“What was the name of the one you took up with after Damon? William wasn’t it? Compelled him to be all Damon should have been. But that didn’t work did it? Even compelled they didn’t love you, they only acted like they did because they had no choice. Because no one can love you Claire. You don’t deserve it. ”

Claire shut her eyes a moment overwhelmed, trembling with the strength of it. When she opened them they were clear again, the warm mahogany Damon knew and loved, that he could pick out the deep burnished coppers and rich sepias of even if he were blind and they were painfully human and wet, unshed tears quivering on her lashes that she refused to let fall. She was going to break. She believed it, that she wasn’t enough, had never been enough, would never be.

 _‘Is my love not enough?’_ her pained voice echoed again in his head.

“That’s enough!” Damon spat anguished and angry. He couldn’t take this couldn’t watch this. Couldn’t look on while Claire literally came apart at the seams. Something pulled taut in the center of his chest so hard that it hurt and vibrated with stricken alarm.  

“Oh it’s not nearly enough!” Alexander yelled at him. “After what you did to me? After all you took from me? No it won’t be enough until I have taken every shred of happiness from you, taken everything you hold dear and torn it apart into tiny pieces. You don’t get a happy ending.”

Damon started to roar to his feet in fury, the vampire in him taking over.

“Damon, don’t!” Stefan cried. Elena sucked in a sharp intake of breath and Damon stopped. Martin had the barrel of the gun to her temple. She’d be dead before he’d even finished pulling the trigger.

“See there?” Alexander mocked in Claire’s ear. “Doesn’t matter that you love him. He doesn’t love you does he? He could save you, all he has to do is choose. But no, he loves Elena so he’s going to stand there and watch you die.” Alexander looked at Damon with malignant delight. “So come on Damon, pick one!”

“It doesn’t matter if he loves me,” Elena cried. “I don’t love him. I love Stefan.”

Damon tensed, fighting the urge to spring, the drive to mangle Alexander until there was nothing left of him. Willing himself not to flinch at Elena’s words because they hurt. He’d heard them before but they still cut like a whip.

 _‘You fool,’_ his conscience spat at him.

 “Really? Since we’re sharing each other’s secrets,” Alexander suggested looking sharply over at Elena who was shaking in terror.  “Why don’t I let them in on yours sweetness?”

“Don’t,” Elena pleaded.

“Notice anything missing from sweet Elena’s ensemble? Look close now,” Alexander urged gleefully.

Damon looked at her and saw it at the same time Stefan did. The vervain necklace she always wore was missing. “You compelled her,” Damon snarled. But what horrible thing had he compelled Elena to do?

“What have you done?” Stefan demanded aghast.

“Don’t worry,” Alexander promised. “It was only a little compulsion. Just a little truth seeking if you will, nothing more.”

He put his cheek to Claire’s again looking at Damon over her shoulder. “Did you know that Elena has feelings for him? She doesn’t know what they are yet but they’re there. So you see, you’re just in the way aren’t you?”

Damon’s entire being did a twisting inverted back flip of surprise. Elena had feelings for him? He didn’t have time to wonder on it however. Claire gave a choked sob that tore him in two and whatever it was that he kept feeling pull at the center of his being started pushing on his chest until it felt like he was suffocating. He could only imagine Stefan’s expression at the revelation. Stark shock and jealousy probably.

 “You compelled me to tell you the truth and I did,” Elena hastened to say, horrified by the way Alexander had twisted her compelled confession. “I told you I care about Damon and I do, he’s my friend. But I’m _not_ in love with him. I love Stefan!”

Claire looked at her and smiled through her tears wanly. “It’s okay Elena,” she whispered.

Elena shook her head frantically, completely disregarding the man with a gun at her head. “I don’t love him, Claire. He loves you. You know he loves you.”

“Really, Elena,” Claire said softly. “It’s okay.”

“Then why won’t he say it?” Alexander cut. “Why won’t he say _anything?”_ He hovered at Claire’s ear again, pulling the stake against her tighter.  Damon grimaced, something in him twisting until he thought his heart was going to burst.

“That was your last hope wasn’t it Claire? That as long as Elena didn’t love him back that you might have a chance. Isn’t it? All you’ve given him, your heart, your soul, your body, your mind and he doesn’t appreciate it does he? Let’s test something shall we? If it had been him instead of me you met when you were human and he had asked, would you have turned?”

Claire answered him without even missing a beat. “He wouldn’t have had to ask.”

Damon felt his heart stop and the world come crashing down around his ears. Elena would never do it. He knew she wouldn’t. She had no desire to be a vampire for any reason, even if it meant spending forever with Stefan.

_‘Who needs the sun, when I have you?’_

Damon hated himself all over again. He didn’t deserve Claire. How could he even for a second believe he was worthy? But oh God to hear those words. To know someone loved him so completely they’d have sacrificed their humanity, all they held sacred just to be with him. To do what he’d been willing to do for Katherine, sewed shut a rent in his soul that had been so raw and gaping for so long he’d become used to the pain. But the fact that he was going to watch that person die with no way to stop it opened another one twice as deep and infinitely more painful.

“You were right Damon,” Alexander taunted.

Damon glared at him through fevered eyes. He hated him. He hated him more than he hated Katherine. More than he’d ever hated Stefan. He hated Alexander with a purity that made his bones burn.

“Don’t look so upset. You should be proud,” Alexander mocked. “She gave you everything she never would give me.” He laughed turning his attention back to Claire.

“But you don’t have anything left to give now do you? Your last hope is gone. It’s all lies. You’re not enough. What do you have left? No one, nothing. It’s all gone isn’t it? How much can you take?” Alexander pressed hissing in her ear until Claire quaked with repressed and bottled emotion, tears streamed down her cheeks unchecked. She was fighting so hard to hold on. Damon gasped as his heart spasmed and burned for no apparent reason.  

“Stop it!” Stefan cried, horrified. Alexander had everyone right where he wanted them. Claire was going to break and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. It had gone too far.

“What’s left Claire?” Alexander pushed oblivious to anything but making Claire go off the deep end. Pushing her to fever pitch until she broke and Damon knew it would break him too. “How much of ‘you; is still in that pretty little head of yours? A sliver? A breath? All those emotions, all that pain, unrequited love, fear. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you just taste it eating you from the inside out? Come on, feel it Claire. Let him see what’s really in there. Let it out.”

Claire had her teeth clenched, shaking so hard Alexander was being shaken along with her.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Stefan cried desperately.

“No, please!” Damon heard himself cry in despair.

“No, no!” Elena pleaded.

Alexander laughed and it was gleeful, overjoyed. “Come on!” he urged Claire.

And then it happened. Claire screamed and there wasn’t a nerve in Damon’s body that didn’t ache with the echoed pain of it. It was so overwhelming he dropped back to his knees. This shouldn’t be happening. What was going on? This wasn’t normal. Had Alexander’s witch linked them somehow? Like Katherine had linked herself to Elena to keep them from killing her? He was assaulted all at once by fear, grief, pain, loss and hopelessness until he thought he was going mad.  Damon looked behind him at Stefan. Was he feeling it too? But no, his brother was stricken and his face contorted with horrified empathy at what he was seeing but it wasn’t doing to him what it was doing to Damon.

“No, no, no,” Claire cried brokenly, racked with sobs. She had collapsed in Alexander’s arms wailing piteously. It was all Alexander could do to hold on to her and she was damn near about to impale herself on her own stake.

“That’s a girl. Let it all out,” Alexander cooed as if he were soothing a crying infant, giving Damon a victorious grin. But he wasn’t, he’d broken her and Damon had broken with her. He couldn’t bear it. It was too much.

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. It hurts. It hurts. Make it stop. Please make it stop,” Claire wailed. She screamed again and it raced through Damon like a live wire or a lightning strike, so painful it burned. She was going to go insane.

“You can make it stop,” Alexander whispered.

“No!” Elena cried realizing what Alexander was doing.

“Turn it off,” Alexander urged. “It’ll all go away. All the fear, the pain. Turn it off.”

“No. No. No, no, no, no, no,” Claire sobbed refusing to do it. Even half-mad with every emotion she had forced up to full throttle all at once, every instinct in her screaming for her to do it before she died of it, she refused to turn it off.

“Your humanity is killing you. Turn it off!” Alexander demanded.

This was it. They were all going to die like this. Alexander was going to make Claire go crazy and turn into a blithering psych patient before he killed her because she’d never turn it off. She’d fought too long and too hard not to. And then he’d kill or turn Elena, kill Stefan and then finally when there was no one left he would kill Damon.

“NO!” Claire screamed again. Alexander jerked her, the stake held firmly in place over her heart.

“Why? Because of him? Because you don’t want to stop loving him? Look at him! He doesn’t care Claire! Turn. It. Off!”

Damon had failed epically. Of all the things Damon had ever done wrong, ever not succeeded in, this would prove to be the biggest one. He could have defended himself, pathetically admitted that he loved Claire for Alexander’s amusement. It was the truth. But he couldn’t say he didn’t love Elena. It would be a lie and he couldn’t lie to Claire. But maybe, just maybe there was a way. If Claire turned it off she wouldn’t go mad. She wouldn’t love him, it wouldn’t hurt anymore, she wouldn’t be afraid. It would all just stop. He couldn’t stand to see her like this.

“Claire, don’t,” Elena begged her, she was sobbing now and Martin was just standing there waiting for an order like a good little robot, unaffected by any of it. The phonograph had long since stopped playing.

“Leave her alone!” Stefan shouted.

Alexander was doing this because he wanted it to hurt them both, wanted Damon to watch Claire lose the last thing left to her, to cease to feel because it was what made her so vibrantly who she was. She wouldn’t be ‘Claire’ anymore. She’d be a monster with no regard for anyone but herself. But it would take that card out of Alexander’s hands. Could Damon stomach that? If he could convince her to do it, would he be able to live with the fact she didn’t love him anymore if it would stop her pain?

 _‘No. You love her. You need her. You’re hers. She’s yours,_ ’ his conscience told him.

 _‘It’s too late for that. What I need doesn’t matter. Not anymore,’_ he thought back. _‘I can’t be selfish with her.’_

“Claire,” Damon called to her. She was mumbling now in a constant tumble of anguish Damon couldn’t begin to decipher. “Look at me,” Damon said he voice strained, tears in his eyes.

She looked at him in such pain it made his heart break into a thousand pieces. “Listen to me. Turn it off.”

Her face pinched in confusion and pain.

“What?” Stefan spat. “Damon, no.”

Damon ignored him, holding a hand backward for Stefan to be quiet. No humanity was better than insanity. They were all dead anyway, at least she’d die without pain and fear. Stefan couldn’t feel what Damon was feeling he didn’t know how bad it was, how much it hurt. Damon didn’t know how or why he was feeling it but he was.

“It won’t hurt anymore,” Damon choked. “Just turn it off. It’ll all go away. It’s what you have to do. It’s okay. I want you to.”

Claire went still in Alexander’s hold, looking at Damon oddly. Alexander was looking from her to Damon in his own confusion trying to figure out why on Earth Damon would encourage Claire to do the one thing he never wanted to see happen.

“What are you doing?” he cried furiously.

“Just turn it off,” Damon murmured to Claire, the only thing in the room was him and her, nothing else mattered. He had to stop her pain. “I can’t stand to see you in this kind of pain. Just turn it off.”

There’s a stillness that comes over a vampire when they turn their humanity off. A sudden vacating of everything but the most basic essence in the eyes, a blankness that can’t be duplicated by deception or trickery.  The air lightens as everything lets go and there’s a rush of ecstatic relief that nothing known to man can duplicate. You can fake turning it back on, but not off. Damon had faked turning it on before.

It’s so marked you can watch it happen and Damon knew what he was looking at in Claire’s eyes. The clear, definitive nothingness that stared back at him. He’d seen it in the mirror.

All the hurt just disappeared, all the guilt and grief and pain. Damon felt it lift off him like a building being lifted off his chest as if it were him flipping the switch. He shouldn’t have felt it. It wasn’t possible to do that, but Damon could. He felt the switch flip inside Claire and her humanity cut off and it left a gaping hole inside him that hurt as badly as anything ever had. It hurt so much it took his breath away.  Damon wanted to wail and scream in anguish. Why did it hurt? It shouldn’t have hurt. It felt like someone had cut a part of him away that he didn’t know he had. He looked at Claire and saw absolutely no feeling in her expression. He smiled sadly and nodded tightly in acceptance. She was free. He’d lost her completely now but she was free and alive. Damon didn’t mind being the bad guy.

“Claire, no,” Elena cried softly, she was sobbing into her arm, unable to cry into her hands with her arms strung above her head.

“What have you done, Damon?” Stefan breathed. “Her humanity. That was all she had left.”

“Humanity means nothing when you have no one to care about, Stefan,” Damon muttered sorrowfully.

“She had you,” Stefan said.

Damon winced unable to say aloud that he wasn’t enough. That he could never be enough. He didn’t deserve her. He never had. All he could do was set her free and it was her love for him that bound her, it had been the one thing keeping her from turning it off.

Alexander looked utterly and completely confused. He shook his head rapidly. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter why she did it. She did it.” he was completely beset that she’d done it when Damon asked but not him, that even in her darkest hour that she wouldn’t give in to him. That even with him pouring every cutting and hurtful thing into her ear that he could think of that it was Damon who’d been able to free her of it.

It didn’t make it hurt Damon any less. Didn’t fill the void he felt inside him that he shouldn’t have felt. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before. It didn’t occur to Damon in his own anguish and his relief from Claire’s suffering to wonder why _he_ was the only one who could do it.

Damon snickered brokenly at him. “If I’m okay with her turning it off, you can’t use it to hurt either of us.”

Alexander snarled at him pulling Claire against him threateningly and she stood there like a wooden doll even as he pulled the stake harder into her chest, centimeters from killing her. But she didn’t react to him, she felt no fear now.

“You can’t hurt her anymore, Alexander,” Stefan said. “She doesn’t care, about anything.”

“No. No,” Alexander seethed.  He murmured in Claire’s ear, desperate to get his advantage back. “I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want. Just fear me -  _love_  me - do as I say, and I will be your slave!”

Love him? Alexander was utterly insane. Even if it were possible, even if the only emotion Claire had ever felt for Alexander hadn’t been hatred…she wasn’t capable of loving _anyone_ with her humanity off.

Claire titled her head slightly as if she didn’t hear a single word Alexander said. She looked past Damon to Stefan and canted it the other way, then down slightly as if acknowledging him in some weird way Damon couldn’t understand. Then she looked at Damon, her eyes catching his. They were utterly emotionless. But the words that passed her lips would stay with Damon forever.

“Love?” she questioned blandly as if the word were foreign to her, her eyes never leaving Damon’s.

“Yes, love,” Alexander said, thinking she was giving into him finally. “I knew you’d see it one day.” He let the stake drift a little in his exuberance, leaving a miniscule gap between the stake and Claire’s body.

“I love Damon, it’s _always_ going to be _Damon_ ,” she hissed and grabbed Alexander’s stake arm, snapping his wrist as she spun out of his hold, under his arm and disarmed him. She thrust the stake into his stomach. Alexander barked with pain and doubled over.

Damon gawked in complete shock. Those precious words, the one’s he’d never had anyone say to him. The opposite of what everyone else had ever said. Oh God. Guilt, anguish and tragically belated joy flooded him but then suddenly every emotion came barreling back into Damon’s head wide open. And it felt like they were going to crush him, first and foremost among them were love and cold hate. For an instant it disabled Damon’s ability to react, confused and disoriented him..

What the hell was wrong with him? Why hadn’t Claire staked Alexander in the heart? Why was time moving in slow motion? Where was Stefan? Why wasn’t he reacting? They could get out now. Nothing made sense. Everything was complete confusion. And what happened, happened in the span of a breath.

Damon was aware distantly of Alexander growling in pain, clutching his stomach and snarling like a rabid animal.

He saw Claire kick Alexander in the head so he tumbled over and then flash step away from him. Where was Stefan? Why didn’t he help? Do something? 

“Kill her!” Alexander screamed enraged.

Martin trembled. ‘Her’ wasn’t descriptive enough for him to know which ‘her’ Alexander wanted him to kill. Instinct chose for him. It chose Claire, who had sprung for him like a hunting cat. But a human can’t even begin to hope to move faster than a vampire.

“Not her! Elena!” Alexander railed.

Stefan was there. He pulled the pin from the vervain grenade he’d been harboring, launching it from his hand toward Alexander. It exploded in the air, raining concentrated vervain down on the crazed vampire. Alexander roared in angered pain, his exposed skin burning like he’d touched acid. Stefan sped away from it and Damon shielded himself instinctively but it never reached him.

Martin turned his gun on Claire, raised the arm with the stake in it. Claire seized him at the same instant Martin pulled the trigger, but it was his gun hand she’d grabbed. The bullet plunked into the floor harmlessly. She wrenched the gun away from him and before he had a chance to strike with the stake, reached up, gripped his chin and jerked to the side. Martin dropped, his neck broken, to the floor.

Then Claire turned to Elena and did the unbelievable. One hand grabbed the chains Elena’s wrists were bound by, wrapping them around it at the same time that the other pushed Elena’s head to the side. He saw Claire rear her head back fangs bared for a bite. She struck.

Damon didn’t have time to think, only react. Claire’s humanity was off. She was pure vampire now and Elena was a bother to her. He had to stop her, he’d figure out what to do about Claire with no humanity later.

Where was Stefan? Why didn’t he stop Claire?

Damon moved.

Alexander laughed raggedly too weakened to do anything but watch though he was healing rapidly. “Well this is pleasantly unexpected.” He was thrilled that Claire was going to kill Elena.

Claire dragged down on the chains binding Elena and they snapped, her face buried in the join between Elena’s shoulder and neck. Damon reached them and seized Claire yanking her off Elena, intending to snap her neck to stop her without killing her. Claire spun into the motion so she was facing him and grabbed hold of Damon’s head with both hands, kneeing him in his already wounded, though healing slowly, abdomen. Damon’s knees gave as the air was driven from him.

“Not this time, Damon,” Claire said.

Suddenly Stefan was behind her, catching Elena as she stumbled away from Claire’s turned back, her chains dangling from her wrist. Stefan enveloped her protectively, face brooding. It took all of a single heartbeat for Damon to take it all in and even then he couldn’t understand it.

Elena wasn’t bitten, her flesh was unmarked and she didn’t look the least bit afraid of Claire.

Damon glanced up at Claire and she smiled bitter sweetly down at him, sadness and love in her eyes. Her humanity wasn’t off! How? You couldn’t fake turning it off! She’d turned his own tactics on him. Taking him out of the fight and out of harm’s way.

“Claire, no,” Damon pleaded. Claire twisted, breaking his neck and then Damon knew nothing.

 

***

Claire looked down at Damon’s prone body for an instant.

He was going to be so pissed when he came around but he’d be alive. Claire had meant it when she said she’d do anything to protect Damon and she had.

Her head was a raging turmoil of emotions. She’d done the unthinkable knowing it would probably drive her mad. What was a few moments of insanity anyway? It wasn’t like she was going to live to worry about it.

Knowing Alexander would make Damon choose and that he’d be unable to, shouldn’t have to, Claire had planned with Stefan to ensure that Claire made the choice for him.

The choice was simple. Elena. Elena was all Claire would never be. Alexander had been right about that. Claire wasn’t enough, for anyone. She’d never been. But she could do this one thing. She would. She could give Damon ‘enough’. Though she fought the welter of pain that knowing that her love wasn’t enough for Damon caused. It didn’t matter, all that mattered was that Claire would always choose Damon.

So she and Stefan carefully made sure that Claire got to Alexander before anyone else. While Damon had been busy trying to work out who was where doing what, Claire had zeroed in on Alexander and made a beeline for him the instant she saw him. It was half the unchecked blind rage Damon expected from her and half planning but it worked.

Then the wait began. Waiting for the moment to strike and disable Alexander. Waiting for the moment to confuse Damon so completely by feigning a humanity-less attack on Elena that he’d be the only one to try and stop it, so Claire could snap his neck when he least expected it to get him out of harm’s way. Waiting for the moment to do whatever it took.

Damon had never seen Claire mouth ‘trust me’ to Elena as she grabbed her, never seen that her fangs were never bared in aggression. He’d seen only what Claire wanted him to see. She’d given Alexander his greatest wish by appearing to turn her humanity off and then waited for her ‘no humanity reaction’ to Alexander’s emotional assault to render Alexander dumbfounded, long enough to get Elena free.

Claire had done something incredibly inadvisable for a vampire. You cannot fake turning your humanity off. But you can play loose with it. Alexander had been right that she’d been unconsciously turning down her humanity one notch at a time until there was little of it left but the one thing that held true about the humanity switch, on, off or in between, was that despite a vampire’s instinct _not_ to feel…no matter how easy it is to turn it off, it keeps trying to fight its way back in. Losing Vincent, finding out he’d betrayed her, meeting Stefan and Elena, seeing Damon again had made it try to force itself through the wall she’d built around it.

It was why Claire cared about Elena, in spite of her desire not to. Why she cared about Stefan even though he was so self-righteous it drove her nuts. And why when Claire let go, the flood gates slammed open and tore off the hinges.

When she’d deliberately rushed Alexander, she let the switch sail, of its own volition, back up to a hundred percent and all of it came screaming back in with painful force.

When she’d broken, it had been real, painfully so. Worse than anything she’d ever felt. She’d almost not been able to rein it in until Damon pulled her back. When he did, she’d held on to the one emotion that had made her life worth living at all, that gave her strength. Love.

The problem with a vampire in full emotional overload is that you can’t _not_ feel them all at once. The only way to survive it is to focus on the one driving force, the one emotion that makes you strong, that makes you want to live…or die so someone else lives. For Claire in that instant it was love.

Then Claire shoved the switch back down to almost completely off, leaving herself only enough emotion to care about turning it back on to finish what she had to do. And then shoved it back up when she was free of Alexander’s clutches.

She should be a writhing mass of hysteria on the floor, a completely insane babbling idiot. But she wasn’t, she didn’t quite know how but she was. One did not play with the humanity switch like that. One either dialed it down and left it for a while or flipped it on or off and left it for a while. Yo-yo-ing it up and down wildly would break your mind.

It was akin to rapidly flicking a light switch on and off until the bulb blew.

Claire didn’t feel fine but she had enough of a grasp on her sanity to finish the job. Love had sustained her before, now the emotion she held onto was cold all consuming hate.

Claire looked back to Stefan and Elena held protectively and lovingly in his arms. She flinched. Elena had feelings for Damon. At least there was something there for Damon to tease out one day. She wished she had a moment to say good-bye to Damon, to all of them.

“Get Elena and Bonnie out of here,” Claire said decisively nodding toward one of the windows. “Damon’s going the way of the kitchen sink.”

Stefan nodded tightly, hesitating. He was thinking about staying to help.

Alexander was still wailing from his vervain burns and beginning to realize what had happened. He was healing fast. Too fast. No time.

 “Go!” Claire bit venomously.

Stefan’s face crumbled in regret and sadness. He knew this was a suicide mission, had known it from the moment they’d made the plan. “Thank you,” he said fervently.

Claire solemnly nodded once, tears she refused to shed burning her nose. She gave him a wan smile and then he was gone, taking a bewildered looking Elena with him.

Claire turned back to Damon, hefting him up unceremoniously by his jacket, limbs flailing all over the place as she got him off the floor. He wasn’t too heavy. She could pick up a car if she wanted to but he was cumbersome and taller than she was. She dragged him over her shoulder like a sack of flour.

Alexander pulled the stake from his stomach with grunt. Claire heard it clatter hollowly to the floor. He let out an angry rumble. He shouldn’t be healing that fast, even with his age that vervain grenade should have had him down for longer.

“You could do with a few less sorority girls in your diet, lover,” she joked weakly as she hauled Damon to the window and kicked the glass out, leaving splintered bits of the grilles hanging and jagged shards of glass gleaming in the darkness of the firelight. The moon had long since set, dawn would be here soon.

Then without further sentimental adieu she couldn’t afford but desperately wanted, she put one foot on the window sill so she could get leverage, and then pushed Damon’s body out the shattered window to fall to the ground below.

The instant she released Damon and he went into freefall for the ground, Alexander grabbed Claire from behind, his arm around her waist and dragged her back from the window. Claire tried to pry herself away from him, seizing a sharp length of the windows grille in the process. It broke off in her hand. Nifty, improvised stake.

“Your humanity isn’t off, is it?” he growled as he pulled her away from the window. Claire couldn’t stake him the way he had a hold on her, so she did the next best thing, she poked the stake into the arm he had around her.

He yowled and lost his grip. Claire bolted across the room away from him, she couldn’t turn and stake him before he could react.

“Never was,” Claire said snidely.

Alexander stood there trying to calculate how to get his hands on her again, watching her intently with a look of vexed fury on his face.

“So all this was just…” he snapped.

Claire grinned viciously. “A joke. A big fat lie. Best part is,” she pointed at him with the slim bit of wood, “you believed it.”

Alexander growled at her petulance. Claire laughed vindictively.

“You thought I was the wounded little bird you could break and lock in a cage. But I’m not a victim. I choose to be this way.”

Alexander rushed her and tackled her. They skidded across the floor, plowing into one of the gas cans. It toppled over and unbeknownst to them began to leak.

Claire ignored his tackle and instead drove the stake into Alexander’s back. He yelped in pain and Claire got out from under him, intending to remove the stake from his back and flip him over so she could plunge it into his heart.

“Buck up sire. I’m _exactly_ the monster you wanted me to be. Careful what you wish for,” she spat as she reached for the stake, one foot pressing down on Alexander’s back. He yelled again as she pulled it free. He was weakened by the vervain, just not as much as he should have been.

The moment the stake was free, he flipped himself grabbing Claire’s ankle and twisting it so she crashed to the ground hard. He clambered up her body, grabbing her chin, intending to shove upward and break her neck. Claire stabbed him in the side with the makeshift stake. Alexander collapsed backward gripping the wound with a yip.

“Vervain’s a bitch isn’t it?” Claire bit, struggling to her feet. Alexander rushed her again before she could stake him, hurling her across the room and nearly into the fireplace on the opposite side. Claire rolled at the last second avoiding the flames and kicking over the other gas can in her haste to avoid being charbroiled. She was covered in gray ash. She almost gagged in revulsion and grief. Vincent’s ashes. She was covered in Vincent’s ashes.

 But then something glinted on the floor, catching Claire’s eye.

Elena’s necklace. Quickly and for what reason she couldn’t say, she snagged the chain and shoved the bauble into her pants pocket. Maybe, if she survived this, she could give it back to Elena. Fat chance of that happening.

“You have no idea,” Alexander seethed. Claire zipped to her feet. They were both panting, wounded. Claire was still full of wooden bullets she’d yet to be able to remove and Alexander was suffering the effects of Stefan’s vervain grenade and Claire staking him more than once.

“Let’s talk about that a minute,” Claire said as they paced, circling, looking for an opening. She could smell the gasoline now, she knew it was leaking.  It was beginning to creep across the floor in thin tendrils, virulently seeking something to ignite it. If it reached the fireplaces, the whole place would go up in flames. Nothing for it though. This was a do or die situation. One or both of them was dying. Period.  “How is it you’re healing so fast?”

Alexander grinned crookedly. “Little trick Katherine taught me.”

Claire nodded knowingly. “You’ve been dosing yourself with vervain.” Mentally she seethed. Katherine Pierce. She hated that woman now more than ever. Alexander might have turned her but _Katherine_ provoked him to do it. Whose life _hadn’t_ Katherine ruined?

Alexander should have attacked by now. Even weakened he was stronger and faster but he hadn’t. Why was he stalling? Claire didn’t like it. He was up to something.

There was a whisper of sound from outside, the distinctive rhythm of feet moving inhumanly fast. Stefan retrieving Damon. It distracted Alexander for a split second. Claire seized it and bolted for him.

She pushed him back, smashing him into the wall and plunged the stake into his chest but he pushed her arm just enough she missed his heart. It sank in deeply and Alexander roared in pain. Claire tried to wrench the stake free for a second try.

Around them the gasoline on either side ignited having finally reached the fireplaces. The flames raced to consume the fuel source hungrily leaving them wreathed in it. No way out now but death.

 

***

Stefan raced Elena downstairs and out of the Meeting House in a blur. He deposited her on the grass at the edge of the field, near the trees they had come onto the property through. Hidden a few feet away by the underbrush where he’d fallen, was the body of Jacob Miller.

Stefan’s lungs burned. He was panting with exertion, weakened by his wounds but that didn’t stop him from clutching Elena’s face between his hands the instant he stopped, tilting her head back and forth for signs of injury.

“Are you okay? You sure he didn’t compel you to do anything else? He didn’t feed you his blood did he?” Stefan asked frantically.

The last two questions were stupid on his part. If she were compelled she probably wouldn’t know it and if Alexander had fed her his blood in an attempt to turn her before they got there or as a last ditch ‘screw you’ Elena’s lip wouldn’t be split.

Elena shook her head as much as she could with Stefan holding it. “No. No, I’m fine,” she insisted.

Stefan nodded. “Stay here. I have to get Bonnie.” Elena nodded, swallowing tensely. She wrapped her arms around herself as Stefan turned and bolted back for the Meeting House.

Stefan hastened back inside. Above him he could hear the scuffling and thuds of Claire and Alexander fighting. He winced. This was a suicide run and he knew it. But there’d been no other way to save the majority of them.  He’d get Bonnie out, retrieve Damon and then go back and help Claire. He couldn’t let her face Alexander completely alone.

He bent to pick up Bonnie, moving sporadically at vampire speed when he could. He scooped her up in his arms, stumbling when her slack weight was more than he anticipated. He was in need of blood, he needed to get the wooden bullets out of himself but there was no time.

Stefan ran for the door, the sickly sweet yet oddly appealing smell of gasoline pricking his sensitive vampire nose. Oh god. The gas cans. He had to hurry.

He zipped across the field and staggered to a halt beside Elena, laying Bonnie gently down in the grass beside her. The witch was still unconscious. What had Claire done to keep her out this long? Stefan knew she’d saved her with her own blood and then rendered her unconscious so she wouldn’t get hurt but he didn’t know how.

“Bonnie!” Elena cried worriedly, dropping down in the grass beside her friend. She reached for the slight girl with trembling hands, fearing the worst.

“She’s fine. Just unconscious,” Stefan said reassuringly. “Claire saved her.”

“Thank god,” Elena said with relief, stroking Bonnie’s hair.

Stefan heaved himself up on his feet again and stumbled a few steps. “Stefan?” Elena asked with renewed worry. Stefan waved her off.

                                  “I’m fine. I’m going to get Damon.” He dismissed her concern then he forced himself to run as much as it taxed him, rounding the left side of the house as the familiar sounds of a vampire versus vampire fight raged upstairs.

His brother was lying in a tangled pile beneath the window Claire had thrown him out of. Stefan dragged him up with great effort. He was waning fast, Stefan knew his strength was going to give out on him any minute. He couldn’t believe he’d lasted this long.

The smell of gasoline was stronger, drowning out anything else as it seeped through the second story floorboards and leaked through the cracks in the first floor ceiling below.

Stefan hauled Damon’s limp form over his shoulder, his head lolling where Claire had snapped his neck and ran. He kept having to stop and start as his muscles protested and his wounds nagged him. Behind him, half way across the field, he heard a whooshing roar he didn’t dare to look back at.

Elena gasped and pointed toward the Meeting House. “Stefan!” she cried. Stefan reached her and Bonnie, all but dropping Damon on the ground beside the witch and then collapsing at their feet. He sat there propped on his elbow too weakened to move, his breath coming in ragged huffs.

He looked back at the house. The second floor was on fire, the orange flames leaping and dancing through the windows. Oh god.

“What about Claire?” Elena cried frantic, looking from Stefan to the burning house.

Stefan shook his head, hands groping over his body for wooden bullets. If he could get them out maybe he’d have enough strength. “I can’t.”

“We have to do something!” Elena said incredulously. Stefan grimaced. He wanted to. He knew Elena expected him to be able to save everyone, unable to accept that even one of them should be lost in the fight.

“I’m too weak,” Stefan rasped regretfully as he pried a bullet out and tossed it aside. Elena started to slide over to him and assist him but he shook his head again. “Help Damon.”

Elena looked torn for a second and then she did as Stefan asked, straightening Damon’s limbs and righting his head, then she began searching him for wooden bullets and Stefan finished pulling the ones from his flesh.

“We can’t just let her die,” Elena cried as she worked on Damon, plucking out bullets as fast as she could. Stefan tried to struggle up, intent that he would go back but his limbs gave from under him.

The light cast from the burning house intensified as the first floor caught, roaring like an angry beast. The house was going up rapidly, the old rotted wood making it a huge tinderbox and fueled by gasoline that burned fiercely hot.

Even if Stefan did have the strength, which he didn’t, removing the wooden bullets wasn’t enough, he needed blood, it was far too late. He’d never survive the flames if he went back.

“It’s too late.” Stefan watched it with despair. It had been Claire’s choice. It had been the only way and it saved them all. But once again Stefan was the man behind a covert plot that ended with the woman Damon loved dying, in a fire no less. History repeating. Damon was never going to forgive him.

Elena was sobbing.

 

***

 

“You took everything from me. I am going to enjoy killing you. I guess I should thank you. It’s been a hell of a ride,” Claire spat as she twisted the stake in Alexander’s chest. The damn thing was stuck, hung on a rib. “Thanks to you, I’ll never again be a victim of someone like you,” she said the last word gruffly as she tried to get the stake free.

Suddenly Claire felt funny. Her veins coursed with fire and she started choking. Oh god, it hurt. She knew this pain, vervain. But how?

Alexander laughed.

“You know my witch you fed on when you killed her? She was full of vervain, spelled to be slow acting. Loads of it. Wondered when it would kick in. Neat little trick that.”

Claire went wide-eyed as her legs started to buckle, her grip on the stake to loosen. She couldn’t breathe.

“I honestly thought it would be Damon who did it. But beggars can’t be choosers. Told you your temper would be the death you.”

Alexander pried the stake from his own chest and plunged it into hers. Claire gave a choked gasp as it entered her body, she could feel the wood press against her heart. Impending death.  She tried desperately to grope for it as if she could remove it, choking and gagging as the vervain debilitated her to nothing.

Alexander held her, waiting for her to die, a gleeful smile on his face. For the grayness of death to spread over her skin. But Claire’s heart thudded in her chest painfully, brushing against the stake. It had missed. By so small a margin it barely counted but almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

With the last of her strength as the vervain took it from her and her heart threatening to kill her by beating too hard and hitting the stake, Claire pulled it out. Part of it splintered, leaving a sliver behind but it didn’t matter, she was dead anyway she’d never escape the flames and she knew it. She reversed the stake and shoved it into Alexander’s heart with a snarl.

His entire expression changed, his hands fell away from her and his mouth opened in a silent ‘O’ of complete surprise as the tell tale creeping sound of true death slid over him and he started to turn into a grayed, vein ridden corpse.

“You missed,” Claire hissed.

Alexander went rigid as death took him and Claire released the stake, collapsing to the floor in a heap. Alexander’s corpse thunked down beside her. Detachedly Claire raised a brow in gratified amusement. He was finally dead. Dick.

Claire lay helpless as the flames crept closer. Their heat encroaching on her, licking toward her menacingly. She could hear things starting to come apart around her, the house was going up rapidly, but the sounds were becoming distant. Her heart fluttered feebly, trying to keep pumping and each time it did brought it closer to the sliver of wood embedded next to her heart. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The flames turned into a glowing fuzzy wall before her. She was too weak to even lift her head as she watched them.

She’d done it. She’d killed Alexander. She’d saved Damon and Elena, Stefan and Bonnie. She’d gotten her revenge. That was all that mattered. It was okay if she died. There wasn’t anything left for her anymore anyway. The monster was getting what it deserved. Nothing.

“Goodbye, Damon,” she whispered softly into the ether and let go. Then the blazing light gave way to darkness.


	13. Chapter 13

Damon groaned and shifted his head as the last of the bones in his neck reset and he came back to himself. “Why am I still alive?” he muttered.

“Damon,” Stefan said breathless. He felt Stefan’s hand clutch at his jacket.

“Did we get him?” Damon rasped opening his eyes. The air was too warm, something was making a roaring crackling sound and there was an urgent painful pull on his heart as if something was trying to draw it out of his chest. He felt like he needed to be somewhere _right now_ desperately.

As Damon’s vision cleared he saw Elena was hovering over him, her eyes filled with tears, her cheeks stained with tracks where she’d been crying despondently.

“Elena? What’s wrong?” Damon muttered sitting up with worry. Elena shook her head, unable to speak. Damon was confused.

Bonnie was beside him, unconscious but alive. Stefan was fine, though he looked terrified and he had a hold on Damon’s leather jacket that threatened to rip holes in it. Elena wasn’t hurt that he could see. What was going on.?

Then it hit him. Claire…where was Claire? Claire’s ploy. Faking turning her humanity off. Snapping his neck. The heat, the house was on fire.

“Where’s Claire?” Damon asked panicked.

Stefan shook his head sadly despairingly. “I’m sorry, Damon.”

The painful urgent pull assailed Damon again, he looked from his brother’s anguished expression to the house. No. It couldn’t be. Stefan wouldn’t.

“She’s not still in there?” Damon gasped horrified, his eyes wide as he searched his brother’s for the desperate hope that he was wrong. Stefan’s guilty expression was confirmation enough. Claire had never gotten out. She’d suicided to save them.

“No,” Damon breathed, grief stricken. She couldn’t die. That tether that felt like it was wrapped around his heart squeezed and pulled again viciously. And Damon knew in that moment that if Claire died, he’d die. He couldn’t lose her. It would kill him.

“Claire!” Damon screamed in the direction of the house, dragging himself up on his knees. No. No. Not like this. Not again. He’d thought he’d watched Katherine burn in the church in 1864. Oh god. No. No. This was not happening.

 Stefan seized the other side of his jacket stopping him from mindlessly bolting after Claire. Elena scrambled up out of his way, a hand clapped over her mouth as she shook with sobs.

“She’s not dying for me!” Damon spat in an anguished wail. “Bonnie!”

Bonnie could put out the fire through magic, she’d done it before when he’d been caught in the fire on Founder’s Day. He threw himself back down on the ground and grabbed the little witch, shaking her violently. She had to wake up. “Wake up!” he demanded but her body just jerked back and forth in his grasp. She was completely unconscious.

Stefan dropped down beside him, grabbing his shoulder in a steel grip, trying to catch Damon’s eye.  “It was her choice. It was the only way, Damon. We’d have all died,” Stefan pleaded for him to understand. Elena had turned away her face buried in her hands in mortification. Damon looked at Stefan in shock, dropping Bonnie back to the ground.

He got up in stunned disbelief. Stefan followed him, gripping his jacket in his hands again desperately.

“You knew? You knew she was going to do this and _you let her_?” Damon cried, betrayed and heartbroken, his chest felt so tight he couldn’t get his breath. It was 1864 all over again; his little brother had backstabbed him and gotten the woman Damon love killed.

“Damon, I’m sorry,” Stefan said. Damon shook his head at him in anguished hatred. “I tried to go back…”

“ _Sorry_? You did this. This is your fault,” Damon spat. He looked toward the house. It was engulfed in flames. He had to go after Claire. He had to. He couldn’t lose her. He needed her. He loved her. He _was_ hers, she _was_ his, and if she died, Damon would die with her. “If she dies I will never forgive you. I’ll never forgive either of us.”

Damon tried to bolt and Stefan refused to let go, being dragged with him. “It’s too late. You’ll be killed!”

“Then let me be killed!” Damon screamed at him then in a hurt fury he grabbed Stefan’s head and snapped his neck before he could stop him again. Damon didn’t even wait for Stefan’s body to hit the ground, he turned and ran for the house. Elena flung herself down beside Stefan, crying plaintively and angrily after him.

“Damon!”

But all Damon could think of was Claire.

 

***

 

Damon reached the front door of the Meeting House and tried to enter but a wall of fire prevented him. It reached and stretched higher than he was tall, crackling and spitting. There was no way Damon could get through it without being incinerated.  That didn’t stop Damon from considering attempting to jump through the flames. Could he clear them without igniting?

He looked around him frantically for something that would help him. He was utterly consumed with the need to get to Claire. It drove him as fervently as the need for blood, burned in his veins like a drug, gave him strength born of adrenalin that he shouldn’t have in his condition. He felt whatever it was inside him that kept urging him on, the thin thread that wound around his heart, draw tighter as if it would drag him through the fire if he didn’t obey it.

Behind him, he could faintly hear Elena screaming for him, frightened. The flames leapt higher, driving Damon back. He had to get in. He had to get to Claire. It was as essential to him as breathing. His eyes fell on the doorstep he was standing on, a solid sheet of slate, shorn from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and hauled here by wagon before Damon had even been born. Slate that wouldn’t burn. If he used that he could create a bridge to get over the flames.

Damon jumped off the doorstep and knelt, digging his fingers into the edge of the slate slab where it met ground and pulled with every ounce of strength he had. Even with a vampire’s power the slab protested moving cemented as it was to the ground it had been embedded in for over a century. Damon didn’t care.

His muscles burned and screamed at him. Damon ignored it. With a tremendous groan of exertion, the slate slab gave and pulled away from the ground. Damon lifted it and shoved it toward the door, toppling it like a great domino into the flames and smothering them, though the flames refused to be extinguished, bending and snaking beneath the slate to flare up on either side of it.

Damon raced over his impromptu bridge into the Meeting House. Everything was bathed in a firey red-orange. A burning ceiling beam occupied half the room, having given way and fallen at an angle across it, still half attached at one end. Where it had been Damon could see flames raging above through the quickly crumbling floorboards.

“Claire!” Damon called desperately. He got no answer; he could barely make out the sound of his own voice over the sound of the fire.

The stifling heat was unimaginable, burning at a temperature that only gasoline could, searing his lungs. The air was thick with ash and soot, choking Damon’s throat and nose, making it even harder to breathe. His eyes burned with the heat and the smoke.

Damon put an arm across his face, trying to shield himself against some of it. His eyes were narrowed until they were almost shut, the brightness of the flames harsher on a vampire’s eyes than a human’s and tried to figure out how to get to Claire through the inferno. The stair railing was blazing and as he watched it gave and tumbled to the floor sending sparks up in a shower that Damon beat away from him. Some of them hit, singeing his hair and clothing but he barely felt it. That insistent undeniable feeling tugging at him, urging him on with a fervor he had never known, drove anything but Claire from his mind. Not his own safety. Not how mad this was. Nothing but Claire mattered.

“Claire!” he screamed, more desperately than before.

The stairs were alight with flames but Damon couldn’t think of anything but getting to Claire. He ducked his head and dashed through the flames, disregarding any damage he might sustain in the process. Behind him the ceiling where the support beam had been and subsequently the floor above it, collapsed with a thunderous crash. The fire roared at a decibel level that was deafening, the heat soaking into him until it was painful as Damon burst through the ruined second story doorway. The arm he’d shielded his head with was on fire. He yelled as the flames ate at his flesh, beating them out with his other hand and searing it in the process.

The room was nothing but a matrix of fire. There were holes in the floor where it had been burned away or fallen through, making the ground a maze of rapidly smoldering wood that would crumble at any moment.

“Claire!” Damon called despondently.

He could barely see through the flames but he saw two shadowed shapes beyond the fire. Alexander and Claire. He didn’t know which was which and in the glare of the flames he could barely see.

“Claire!” Damon yelled, hoping to illicit a response from one of the figures. For Claire to hear him. But there was no answer, neither figure moved.

That something within in him flared to life like a beacon, making Damon’s nerves hum as if he’d touched a live wire. And though Damon thought it was a trick of the light, something caused by the brightness of the flames like a mirage in the desert, for an instant he saw a thread that ran through the air, ephemeral as moonlight, shimmering silver and thin as spider silk that led from him  through the flames to one of the figures prone on the floor. And he knew with a clarity that resonated so strongly of ‘Claire’ and made him smell orchids and sandalwood even with soot clogging his airways that the figure the thread led to was her.

Damon swallowed and backed up a pace, and then he flung himself through the flames, heedless of the wall of fire before him in his desperate desire to get to Claire. The fire wrapped around him, trying to catch on his hair, his clothing, it burned fiercely hot along his skin, rasing blisters upon it. He growled in pain but refused to let it stop him.

“Oh no,” Damon breathed raggedly, “No, no, no.”  He peeled his leather jacket off ignoring the strips of skin it took with it where the material had been melted to his flesh.

Alexander’s gray body was circled by flames that didn’t burn him, as if even the fire refused to touch him even in death. His watery blue eyes flat and empty though his face was set in a rictus of surprise and pain, the stake protruding from his chest testament to how he died.

Claire wasn’t moving. She was sprawled on her side in a dead slump with her back to him, one arm bent awkwardly beneath her and her legs askew as if she had simply dropped where she stood. Part of her raven black hair had come loose from its tail and lay in a tangle like a thorny halo. But worst of all and what made Damon’s voice a mournful wail and his heart stop was that she wasn’t moving and the entire right side of her body was on fire.

“Claire!”

Damon sprung to her frantically smothering the flames with the remnants of his jacket.

“You are not dead. You are not dead.” Damon said over and over, his voice strangled by tears.  When he got the flames extinguished what was left was a melted mass of cloth and flesh it was hard to separate by sight. He couldn’t tell if before the flames had cooked it if the flesh had been healthy pink or morbid gray.

Something groaned deeply above him. The rafters were starting to give, smoke billowing through rents in the ceiling where it had crumbled away. The floor felt flimsy and weak, creaking and moaning in protest of Damon’s added weight. The whole thing was going to collapse in on itself any moment.

Gently and terrified, he rolled Claire onto her back and though the right side was  charred and blistered beyond recognition the left was shockingly pale but flesh toned. She was alive. Barely.

“Oh thank God,” Damon breathed.

Her front was soaked in blood that had sizzled and baked in the heat, turning it black and there was a gaping hole where her heart was, the wound unhealing. Damon could see something glisten wetly inside the wound that quavered so slightly that only a vampire would have seen the movement. A thick splinter of wood that, with the barest trembling of a heart still fiercely holding on to life, kept shredding along the side of it, cutting shallow furrows that grew deeper with ever quiver of Claire’s waning heart. It had to come out, before it punctured her heart and killed her.

The floor beside Damon gave, falling away so abruptly that the flames below flared through the hole it left and Alexander’s body tumbled down with it, the sound of it striking ground lost in the roar of the fire. The rafters groaned and popped warningly, bits of the plaster raining down on Damon’s head like rain.  The smoke was so thick the air was the color of charcoal, you couldn’t breathe without inhaling a lung full of the black smoke.

He had to get out now or they’d be buried alive and burned in the smoldering ashes. But if he moved Claire with the splinter still in place and it moved at all, she might die. Damon was panicked.

One of the rafters gave a last moaning wail and fell, taking out the floor on the other side of the room almost completely, leaving Damon and Claire stranded on the thin strip remaining. Now. Had to get out. Now.

The flames grabbing at his ankles and legs, Damon slid his arms under Claire’s limp body and lifted. His knees gave, sending him back to the floor. Frightened Damon looked at the open wound in Claire’s chest. Had the splinter shifted? It had, closer to her heart, rubbing against it like a violin bow. The floor creaked threateningly the planks shifting beneath him. His strength, even born of adrenalin and desperate need, couldn’t last forever. But he couldn’t fail. Damon couldn’t fail. 

Claire cradled in his arms Damon’s eyes flicked to the shattered window. That was the quickest way out but the drop and the impact upon landing, even with a vampire’s grace (which Damon wasn’t betting on just now given his weakness) would force the splinter into Claire’s heart. He had to go back the same way he came in.

With a defiant outcry of effort and refusal to be stopped, Damon forced himself onto his feet, Claire held securely against him as her head hung over his arm, her burned arm dangling. Then his breathe coming in a shaky rasp, Damon ran with every ounce of speed he could find in him.

He cleared the wobbling strip of floorboards and then down the stairs that still blazed brightly, both crumbled in his wake, falling away from his heels as he went. He careened through the first floor room and out the front door a millisecond before the roof collapsed in on itself and crumbled the Meeting House that had stood for over a century like wet paper.

He stumbled to a rocky walk, trying frantically not to stumble, not to waver for fear the splinter threatening to kill Claire would move again.

“Damon!” he heard Elena cry. He saw her shadowed shape rise to its feet, his eyesight worn down to the equivalent of a human’s now, and then heard the rustling shush as she raced toward him worriedly.

She reached them easily; it was all Damon could do to keep moving forward.

“Oh my God,” Elena gasped horrified.

All Elena could see, the way Damon had Claire cradled to his chest, was her burned side. She had kicked off her heels and was running barefoot through the knee-high grass. She clamped a hand over her mouth with revolted nausea at the sight of Claire’s charred flesh; the smell of it even to Damon was sickly sweet, like fried pork.

Damon started to tilt with exhaustion, to lose his grip on Claire. Elena rushed to help him, taking part of the weight of Claire’s body and together they shuffled the last few steps toward where Stefan and Bonnie lay, both still out cold.

Together Damon and Elena lowered Claire’s body carefully to the ground. Damon spared not a glance for his little brother who was lying at a strange angle with his neck broken. He was furious with him, hurt and betrayed.

Damon dropped down beside Claire’s body, his legs more giving out than bending to accommodate the action. Elena moved back so she wouldn’t be in the way, aghast as the Meeting House burned to the foundation behind them.

“Is she?” Elena asked in a bare whisper. Her voice was nasal and rough from crying, her eyes red rimmed and tears still glistened in them threatening to start all over again at the least provocation.

“Not yet,” Damon muttered. He wasted no time rolling back the sleeve of his charred shirt. Already, though it was taking longer than usual, his burns and blisters were fading away leaving unmarred skin behind. “But we’re not out of the woods.”

Damon’s hands shook and fear had a grip on him that refused to let go. He took a deep breath that made his raw throat ache to steady himself. He could do this. He had to.

Then with a grimace, he carefully slid his hand into the gaping wound in Claire’s chest, his fingers cautiously seeking the splinter of wood that had worked its way deeper. Terrified with every breath, he’d touch it by accident on the wrong side and be the one who drove it all the way into her heart.

Elena sucked in a sickened gasp. She didn’t see someone shove their hand into someone else’s chest with the intent of helping rather than ripping their heart out very often. She didn’t even see the latter frequently.

“Don’t you dare die,” Damon whispered to Claire’s unconscious form. “I couldn’t stand losing you forever.”

Had he been able to see himself he would have seen his face was pinched with pained concentration, his ice blue eyes bright in a soot-streaked face with burgeoning tears of his own. He couldn’t understand why she was unconscious, why she hadn’t reacted by screaming and writhing while she burned.

Had he been able to see Elena he would have seen her head twist in an empathetic sad way as she watched him, her hand trembling as she held it over her mouth anxiously.

Damon’s fingertips brushed the splinter and he pulled them back fearfully. He could feel Claire’s heart thrumming erratically ever so slightly against them.

 _‘Stubborn to the end,’_ Damon thought with sad affection and his nose burned with withheld tears.

With the care of a surgeon, Damon worked his long fingers over the splinter. It was as long as his palm and as wide as his pinky finger, jagged and rough, more than enough to kill a vampire. Delicately he pried it with painful slowness away from Claire’s heart and into his hand until his fingers could curl around it. Then gently he extracted his fist, clenched tightly around the long jagged splinter until it bit into his palm. As he did he felt Claire’s heart tremble one more time and then go still.

Panic seized him. Damon dropped the splinter from his blood-slicked hand dismayed, ears straining for the distinctive sound of vampiric death, eyes dilating to their fullest for the slightest hint of gray tinge to Claire’s skin. Had he been too late? Had it punctured just enough to kill her?

“No. No. Claire,” Damon pleaded.

He looked up at Elena desperately. Elena’s face was stricken and pale with heartsick horror.

“She needs blood, Elena,” he said, his voice sounding shrill.

Elena gulped and nodded, sinking quickly to her knees beside Claire on the opposite side from Damon heedless of her dress hiking up her thighs in a very unladylike manner.  She rolled Claire’s head toward her and turned her wrist, pushing the shackle that still circled out of the way and pressing it to Claire’s unmoving lips.

“Here,” she encouraged with a persistent sniffle.

Claire shuddered faintly, her sensitive vampire nose picking up Elena’s violets and roses scent and beneath it the hot spicy tang of her blood. Damon whimpered in relief, for an instant a shaky smile blooming on his face as the void inside him that occurred when he’d thought Claire had flipped her switch filled again though it felt painful and tumultuous, a swirling maelstrom of confusion.

“Take my wrist,” Elena prodded Claire again but Claire’s eyes moved beneath their shut lids feverishly and she moaned something that sounded vaguely like ‘No’ as she tried to turn her head away feebly. She wouldn’t feed from Elena.

“Claire, you have to feed,” Damon said insistently.

“No,” he heard Claire say so softly it was more like the exhalation of breath than a word. Was she trying to death will herself? Was Claire so bent on protecting Elena even now that she wouldn’t even drink the tiny bit of blood she needed to stay alive? Or was it something more? The fever dream remembrance of her turning, being forced to feed?

“You need blood,” Elena insisted forcefully in that bossy manner of hers that only Elena had.

Claire moaned again in pain, she was regaining enough consciousness to feel it and since her wounds wouldn’t heal without the blood she needed she felt injuries that would have killed a human, might still kill her.

“Hey, hey,” Elena cajoled her brow furrowed deeply, her large doe eyes dark with worry, still pressing her wrist to Claire’s mouth. She reached out with her other hand and stroked Claire’s cheek soothingly. “It’s okay.”

Claire’s eyes fluttered gently, opening a crack, febrile and rolling deliriously. She looked at Elena and Elena nodded fervently.

“Drink,” she prodded again gently. Claire’s face pinched and Elena pressed down a little more with her wrist against Claire’s lips. Damon was about to pull Elena’s arm back and bite her wrist himself with the hope that the smell of fresh flowing blood would make Claire drink when Claire’s eyes changed. There was a flash of recognition and acceptance in them and then they flooded red.

Damon felt weak with relief, tension flowing out of him and he released the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Elena winced and made a small noise as Claire bit down gently. At first she drank weakly and if Elena hadn’t made it a point to keep pressure on her wrist Claire would have lost her hold on it. Then Elena’s blood began to do its job and Claire’s hand came up, clamping down shakily on it, drinking in earnest. Elena’s hissed but resolutely wouldn’t be moved.

After only a couple of good mouthfuls Claire stopped, pulling back refusing to take more than absolutely necessary. Elena looked at Damon the question in her eyes. ‘ _Was that enough?’_ Damon nodded jerkily.  And Elena’s eyes shut as she sat back on her heels, relieved. Her bleeding wrist wrapped in the hem of her ruined dress.

Claire’s head lolled in Damon’s direction her eyes already shut again because it was too much effort to keep them open. Her wounds, save the ones with bullets still in them that Damon would get out in a second now that she wasn’t dying on him, were beginning to close. The burns on her flesh starting to heal, leaving her skin smooth and flawless again. Through parched lips she whispered.

“I’m sorry my love wasn’t enough.”

And Damon’s heart clenched in his chest, the tether he’d felt before tightening until it felt like it was cutting it in two. He winced and caressed her face, brushing back a stray tendril of hair from her forehead. He’d been so scared he’d never touch her again and feel warmth in her skin, never feel the thrum of the blood in her veins beneath his finger tips, never feel the life that flowed so vivaciously in her again.

Terrified that he’d lose the one person who loved him as he’d always wanted to be and who he now knew unequivocally he loved as passionately and deeply. Who he couldn’t live without, though he’d stubbornly been blind to it because of his own self destructive nature. More afraid than he’d ever been of anything in his life

She’d almost died in a mad attempt to save them all and she was _apologizing_ for it.

How could he have been so stupid? He’d almost lost her. What if he had? He’d have gone mad and died. He couldn’t have bore it. _‘Mine. Hers,’_ he thought fiercely. _‘She was always mine. I was always hers.’_

It was Claire who in death had made him feel most alive, who made him feel like ‘him’ again. It was Claire who made him feel like he was home when he was near her, accepted without question. He still loved Elena; he couldn’t make himself stop loving her. It didn’t work that way. But even if Elena loved him back, even if there was a chance for them, she would never, could never, accept him as he was.  She made him question himself, made him try to change to please her. He supposed that was good to an extent. It had certainly reined him in and kept him on a morality chain he at turns accepted and despised, but Elena couldn’t complete him. It was Claire Damon couldn’t live without, that made him feel whole, that he needed more than air or blood.

“It’s enough. It’s more than enough,” Damon said his voice strained and thick with emotion. Claire smiled joyfully for a moment with such light that it put the fire blazing behind him to shame and then as if the words had freed her in some way she sighed softly and slipped back into unconsciousness.

Damon’s brow pinched perplexed. It didn’t make sense. She’d fed, the splinter wasn’t threatening to kill her anymore, her wounds were healing. She should have still been weak as a kitten but awake, not regressing by passing out again.

Around them the fire’s orange light illuminated the field but a fainter light, was creeping into the sky, turning the black of night into the slowly paling deep blue of  twilight. The sun was rising.

Damon didn’t have time to think about why Claire was unconscious again. She was probably just spent beyond belief he told himself. He didn’t have time to think about the way the void in him emptied out again or the painful blank spot it left. He had to get them out of here quickly. The fire department needed to be called and the sheriff if they weren’t on their way already. The Meeting House was on the edge of Mystic Falls but the smoke from the fire billowed so high into the sky you’d be able to see it from the town square.

“Quick, help me get the bullets out. We have to get out of here before the sun comes over the horizon,” Damon said to Elena.

Elena nodded jerkily and together they quickly searched out and removed the few wooden bullets that were buried in Claire’s flesh, tossing them helter-skelter into the grass, racing against the sun.

 

***

 

Damon pulled his Camaro under the portcullis of the boarding house not long after sunrise, the light made pale and diffuse by the low hanging stratus clouds and the faint mist that clung to the ground in the early hour but it was still deadly to a vampire. Nothing but the complete cover of darkness or the thick overcast of a heavy storm would be suitable to dampen the sunlight enough to make it possible for a vampire to brave even the first hour of daylight. For that reason, Claire, who was still inexplicably unconscious despite her wounds having healed completely, was in the backseat, tucked between an equally unconscious Bonnie and a broken necked Stefan with a couple of  old blankets from Damon’s trunk wrapped around her for protection from the sunlight. Elena rode in the front seat beside Damon looking exhausted. He didn’t feel much better to be honest. They were both filthy and worn.

He’d called the sheriff upon leaving the Meeting House property and informed her that all her worries were over, the rogue vampire was dead but that unfortunately he’d killed all those he’d kidnapped including a previously unknown woman (the witch). Sheriff Forbes had been both relieved and appropriately melancholy about the missing people that were confirmed dead. Damon laid all the blame for their deaths on Alexander. 

At Damon’s suggestion, she’d agreed to let the house burn to the foundation with the fire department controlling the blaze so it wouldn’t spread. ‘Just in case the vampire had somehow survived’, Damon had said. What he really meant was, ‘so there isn’t enough evidence for you to figure out we killed those people’. Damon had even dragged Jacob Miller’s body back into the house to burn with the rest of them. No one would ever know the truth. Damon knew how to cover his tracks.

Then he’d begged off actually seeing Sheriff Forbes face to face tonight—wait, make that this morning--with the very real excuse that things had gotten hairy and he was in desperate need of a shower, clean clothes and rest. He left out the part about him needing blood or that he had three not conscious/undead people to tend to as well as one shaken human girl. Even Damon could only juggle so many balls at once. He’d see the sheriff—tomorrow. And truth be told, Damon didn’t want to leave Claire’s side. It felt vital that he not be far away.

Damon got out of the car and went to the backdoor. He opened it and without ceremony reached in and dragged Stefan out, letting him hit the paved drive with a callus thud. Damon didn’t much care if he was gentle. Claire might be alive but that didn’t take the sting out of Stefan’s involvement in what by all rights should have gotten her killed. Damon was still hurt and angry at his little brother. Maybe unjustly but he was.

“Damon!” Elena declared with reproachful and angry exasperation as she got out. The sound of her car door shutting reverberated off the walls. Damon didn’t even blink at her chiding, He leaned in, and careful not to expose Claire beneath the blankets, scooped her up and headed inside by the portcullis’s side door.

Elena cast him an irritated scowl as he passed her but didn’t say anything else. Damon gently laid Claire out on one of the living room couches, arranging her limbs comfortably and removing the scratchy blankets that were a part of Damon’s ‘ditch a body’ kit, then covering her with a oversized chenille throw, tucking it around her affectionately.

She didn’t stir and Damon took a moment to brush a strand of her tangled hair behind her ear. He didn’t understand why she hadn’t woken yet. She shouldn’t have passed out again in the first place. Was it exhaustion? Had she been vervained?

It was an intrusion but Damon lifted Claire’s limp hand, the fingers curling automatically around his own in such a way that he gave a bittersweet smile. His. Hers. He bit her finger causing a drop of blood to well, she never so much as flinched as he did it and Damon’s brow furrowed. He sucked the drop from her index finger and grimaced at the taste. It was bitter and acidic, his theory proven, Claire’s blood was chock full of vervain…again. She seriously needed to build a resistance to the vile plant in the future. That was it then. Exhaustion and a truck load of vervain in her system, though Damon couldn’t fantom how Alexander had vervained her. There’d been none they had seen save the bombs on the stairs.

Though Damon chalked it up to pure exhaustion and the vervain in her blood, something about it nagged at him that this wasn’t right, the blank spot inside him felt…wrong and somehow he knew it had to do with Claire. The fierce overwhelming fear and desperate need to rescue her had abated but the trepidation had not.  With a final wince of worry, he sighed and left her side to go help Elena with Bonnie and Stefan.

As he got back outside and moved to help Elena, she was opening her backdoor, maneuvering so Bonnie wouldn’t topple out. The little witch’s head lolled drunkenly on her shoulders and Elena looked up at Damon casting him a scathing look for his treatment of Stefan. Just as Damon was about to shoo Elena aside and carry Bonnie in himself Bonnie groaned and gave a great shudder, suddenly leaning forward of her own accord slim fingers gripping the frame of the door until they were white. She heaved the contents of her stomach all over the pavement and nearly on Damon’s shoes. Damon dashed backward to avoid the stream of vomit while Elena rushed to steady her friend.

“Bonnie!” Elena declared with relief. It was one thing to know the witch was alright thanks to Claire’s efforts, it was another to see your friend awake and alive unharmed.

 “Elena?” Bonnie rasped, disoriented for an instant.  “Elena!” She reached toward her friend frantically, almost tipping herself out of the backseat onto the pavement. Elena sprang forward before she could and threw her arms around Bonnie hugging her fiercely, careful to avoid the fouled spot at her feet.

“Are you okay?” Bonnie asked worriedly.

“I’m fine,” Elena insisted.

“Welcome back,” Damon muttered. He may have been glad that Bonnie was okay for a variety of reasons, selfish and otherwise but he was still angry with her about the daylight ring she’d refused him.

“My god, my head hurts,” Bonnie said, loosing one arm from around Elena to cradle her skull.

“Getting bashed in the head will do that to you,” Damon snarked. “Brick trumps witchy juju apparently.”

“What happened?” Bonnie asked, she blinked as if trying to focus and finding herself unable to.

“Claire saved you,” Damon told her pointedly. Bonnie looked at him in confusion, her mouth opening as if to ask something but Stefan moaned deeply on the pavement nearby drawing Damon’s attention.

Stefan coughed harshly, rolling onto his side with a scrape of fabric on cement.

“Looks like Brutus is awake,” Damon said snidely, giving Stefan a scathing look as he pushed himself up on the pavement and making no move to assist him.

“Claire?” he started to ask hesitantly. Damon swallowed and snarled at his brother with hatred for what he’d done. He was momentarily tempted to lie and tell him she was dead just to watch Stefan flail in self recrimination and guilt. But he didn’t.

“Is alive,” Damon said tightly. Stefan sighed with relief. “No thanks to you.” Stefan flinched at the barb.

“Oh, thank God,” Bonnie murmured.

“Damon, I’m sorry,” Stefan said pleadingly.

“He tried to go back,” Elena defended her boyfriend, half torn between supporting her best friend and running to Stefan’s side.

“Save it,” Damon bit, eyes burning hotly.

He was angry with Bonnie, he was mad at Elena for insisting she put herself in danger, he was furious with Stefan, hurt and betrayed by what he’d done. He was reining in his anger only because it wouldn’t serve him to lose his temper right now. Elena would only have a fit and Bonnie was blameless for what had happened to her even if she was guilty of being a judgmental bitch, if he hadn’t been so relieved Claire wasn’t dead he’d have been pissed at her too.  But he wanted to. Oh he wanted to.

“Damon,” Elena began to rebuke him.

“No, Elena,” Stefan panted dragging himself off the ground unaided. “He’s has every right to be mad at me.”

Elena looked like she wanted to disagree but she glanced from Stefan to Damon and her mouth clamped instantly shut. Damon looked down and away, unsure what had made her bite her tongue but glad she had.

“Let’s get Bonnie inside,” he said softly. “There’s some aspirin in the kitchen.”

Silently the others followed. Bonnie leaning on Elena for support when her legs wouldn’t cooperate and the world tilted out from underneath her.

“Guess I’m still a little wobbly,” Bonnie joked weakly.

 

***

Inside Elena helped Bonnie into one of the wingback chairs while Stefan shuffled toward the unoccupied couch.

“I’ll get you some tea,” Elena said as she fussed over her friend, the broken chains dangling from her wrists still clattering faintly. Bonnie looked green at the prospect.

“I’d rather have water. I don’t think I could stomach tea.”

Elena nodded and started to head for the kitchen but Damon caught her. “Here,” he said reaching for the shackles. Stefan was looking down at Claire on the other couch, a brooding line creasing his forehead.

“Is Alexander…,” Bonnie started to ask.

“Dead,” Damon told her. He gripped one of the shackles around Elena’s wrists and pulled with a grunt. It broke with a sharp snap and he tossed it into a corner.

“Good riddance,” Bonnie snorted. “What about the people he compelled?”

“Also dead,” Damon informed as he removed the other shackle binding Elena.

“What?’ Bonnie gasped in horrified anger. “You were supposed to save them. You were supposed to…”

“There was no other way Bonnie. They would have killed all of us,” Stefan said woodenly.

“Including you,” Damon added for Bonnie’s benefit. She didn’t look happy but she stopped her building tirade of persecution.

“Thanks,” Elena said to Damon, rubbing where the shackles had chaffed her skin, the bite where she’d fed Claire still an angry red.

“Anytime,” Damon told her. “You should put a bandage on that.”

“I will.” Elena cast her eyes down unable to meet his gaze suddenly. Damon frowned slightly at it. Why couldn’t she look at him? Because she’d admitted she felt something for him under Alexander’s compulsion? Did it cause her that much shame? Or was it guilt that made her unable to meet his gaze?

“Who did that to you?” Bonnie asked worriedly breaking the impending tension between Damon and Elena.  She’d seen the bite on Elena’s wrist. “Did Alexander…”

“No,” Elena said shaking her head. Bonnie’s gaze swung unerringly to Damon in accusation again.

“It’s nothing Bonnie. I’ll explain later,” Elena insisted hurriedly. Bonnie scowled but didn’t press the matter further, though she still cut an dark glance at Damon. Damon ignored it. He really didn’t have the time or the patience for Bonnie and her premature judgmental conclusions.

Elena hastened out of the room to fetch Bonnie a glass of water and some aspirin.

 “I was going to go back, Damon,” Stefan said in a very quiet voice. He was still gazing down at Claire on the couch. She hadn’t moved at all. “I never intended to let her go through with it.”

“Yeah well, you know what they say about intentions,” Damon snipped. Stefan frowned and the air became heavy with everything neither of them was saying. Stefan changed the subject quickly.

“Is she asleep?”

“Unconscious. Somehow she got filled full of vervain again between the time you left her and she got staked and charbroiled.”

The lines in Stefan’s forehead deepened guiltily. Damon wasn’t actually trying to throw cutting remarks at his brother they just came out that way.

“She knocked me out,” Bonnie said in a near whisper. Damon looked back at her. The witch was huddled in the chair, gazing at Claire with a perplexed expression on her face.

“What?’ Damon asked. “Alexander’s witch? She didn’t just knock you out. She tried to kill you. So much for your super witch powers.”

“No,” Bonnie said, ignoring the insult. She was flicking her eyes from Damon to Claire and back again . “Claire knocked me out after she killed the other witch and fed me her blood. I touched her. I saw what she was going to do. She said she couldn’t let Elena lose her best friend.”

“She didn’t want to take the chance you might try to stop her or that you might be killed,” Stefan said never turning.

“She knew she was going to die,” Bonnie said softly, awestruck.

“She almost did,” Damon said looking down at Claire. Stefan looked away. Damon clenched his hands tightly with a welter of upset rage. Claire almost died, intended to die, to save all of them. He knew what she’d done. That wasn’t news to him but Bonnie saying it out loud didn’t help matters.

“Stupid, stupid, border-line brain dead …of all the idiotic, dumb…,” Damon hissed pacing, so many insults tumbled through his mind that he couldn’t finish one before he started the next one. His relief giving way to repressed anger at Claire for what she’d tried to do coming to the forefront as the adrenalin in him ebbed bring him dangerously close to lashing out at his brother.

“Is everything okay?” Elena asked. She’d come back with Bonnie’s water and aspirin, her wrist now wrapped neatly with white gauze and an addition of a blood bag and a bottle of animal blood for Stefan.

“Yeah, everything’s fine Elena,” Damon said forcing his anger down, casting a last heated look at his brother.  Elena didn’t look as if she believed him but she wouldn’t meet his gaze as she moved around the room passing out her arm load of beverages.

“What is up with that Bonnie? What happened to the ‘power of a hundred witches invincibility’ you were supposed to have?” Damon said turning his attention on the witch.  Now it was the little witch who looked ashamed and confused as she downed the aspirin Elena had brought her, though her eyes were still going back and forth between Damon and Claire.  She shrugged.

“I don’t know. It was weird. There’s no way she could have been stronger than I was. There was something really strange about it, it was like she had this endless well of power. It wasn’t natural.”

“And being a witch of any kind is?” Damon snipped. Bonnie glared at him.

“We may never know why. Alexander and the witch are dead and if the witch was working for Katherine there’s no telling what she was involved in or where Katherine found her,” Stefan said sitting down on the couch across from Claire finally with the bottle of blood Elena had given him.

“Wait. Katherine? What does she have to do with any of this?” Bonnie asked. Damon looked at her as he filled a tumbler with blood for his blood bag.

“Yeah, remember when I said this didn’t have anything to do with Klaus? I might have been mistaken.” Bonnie was doing the back and forth thing with her eyes again, it was irritating. “Why do you keep doing that?” 

Bonnie deliberately glanced away. “Nothing. It’s nothing. I’m just still a little fuzzy,” she excused. Damon lifted a brow but let it go.

“Apparently, Katherine is the one who set Alexander on Claire in the first place. She convinced him to turn her. She gave her to him like a birthday present,” Elena said her face contorting with disgust. She’d sat down on the couch next to Stefan. She finally looked up at Damon. “He told me all of it Damon. What he did to her, it was horrible. She was so scared.” She looked pitying for Claire. Stefan wrapped an arm around her comfortingly.

“Why would Katherine do that?” Bonnie asked.

“Why does,” Damon paused to correct himself, “or did, Katherine do anything? Somehow it benefited her.”

“How?”

“No clue,” Damon admitted.

“And this involves Klaus how? I mean, if Katherine had Alexander turn her what purpose does it serve now?”

“It wasn’t ‘now’. Alexander turned Claire in 1905,” Damon said.

Bonnie blinked even more confused. “That makes even less sense.”

“Who knows. It was Katherine. But I’m betting that it has something to do with the fact that Vincent knew Elijah. With all the journal’s he kept there had to be something in there about Klaus or Katherine she didn’t want anyone to know,” Stefan said.

“Who is Vincent? What journals?” Bonnie asked in confusion.

“Claire’s friend. Alexander killed him. He was this vampire historian,” Elena explained shortly. Bonnie frowned not understanding but her brows had gone up in interest. Elena gave her a faint grin. “You missed a lot.”

“Looks like,” Bonnie said.

“Okay,” Damon agreed with Stefan, “but that still doesn’t explain Claire. Katherine sicced Alexander on her long before Vincent found her.”

“I have no idea. But I’m not buying that this was all a ploy to distract us if we didn’t cooperate. It can’t be a coincidence that Vincent knew Elijah and Katherine or that he ended up spending a century as Claire’s mentor after Katherine had her turned.”

“None of this makes sense. It’s just confusing,” Damon complained.

“More confusing,” Elena put in. “Alexander told me _everything_. When Claire got away from him and went back to her parents and they tried to kill her he got there in time to save her. Katherine wouldn’t let him. Weirder still, Katherine made it a point never to show herself to Claire. She didn’t want Claire to know about her. And she was in Chicago in 1927. She warned Alexander not to go after Claire”

“Her parents tried to kill her?” Bonnie said. “Wow.”

Damon rolled his eyes. Why was he not surprised Katherine had been involved in the whole disaster in Chicago too? But Elena was right, this whole thing was strange.

 “Why go to all the trouble of having Alexander turn her and then let her die? Why even have Alexander do it in the first place? Why not do it herself? If she didn’t care if Claire died in 1905 why did she suddenly change her mind in 1927?” Stefan asked mystified. Elena shook her head, unable to give him an answer any more than Stefan could fathom one.

“That doesn’t sound like Katherine. She always had a backup plan of a backup plan,” Damon observed. “And whatever her reason in 1927, she obviously wanted Claire dead now. She helped Alexander kidnap Claire in the first place.”

“Not like we can ask her,” Bonnie noted.

“This is starting to give me a headache,” Damon muttered. Stefan glanced up at the grandfather clock and then back at Claire with a tense expression.

“She should be awake by now.”

“She’s just exhausted and vervained. There’s a truck load of it in her system,” Damon excused idly. Stefan still looked concerned… or guilty.  A flash of vindictive glee shot through Damon. Let him feel guilty for what he’d done, for what he’d nearly cost Damon…again.

“How’d she even get that much in her? There wasn’t any but what we had and those bombs Alexander had set,” Stefan said.

“Bombs?” Bonnie gaped.

“Alexander wasn’t taking any chances,” Stefan said. Bonnie snorted, her eyes landing on Damon and then flicking back to Claire again briefly before she made herself look away. Damon frowned. Something was up with that.

“Hell if I know,” he said in response to Stefan, setting down his now empty glass of blood on a side table. “What I do know is that I smell like a barbecue. So I’m going to take a shower, get some rest and let Claire sleep it off.”

“Damon’s right. We should all get some rest,” Stefan agreed putting the cap back on his bottle of blood. He’d barely drank half of it. With that people started moving sluggishly to find they’re rest and Damon left them to it. He looked back as Stefan asked if Bonnie wanted to crash here or go home, offering to drive her.

He hadn’t added his own dose of weird to the conversation. Hadn’t mentioned all the strange things he’d felt back at the Meeting House that he shouldn’t have or how there was a dead space inside him that he couldn’t explain and made him nervous. Hadn’t let it show that he wasn’t nearly as unconcerned about the fact Claire hadn’t woken up yet as he pretended because though he would always love Elena it was Claire he couldn’t live without and he knew it beyond the shadow of a doubt now. Whatever Elena felt for him, whatever he felt for her…he’d made his choice. He chose Claire.

 

***

 

“Damon, wake up.”

Damon made a disgruntled noise and tried to ignore his brother’s voice.  He was still pissed at him and he was still tired. His brother could screw off.

“Damon,” Stefan said more insistently.

“Go away, Stefan,” Damon muttered. He was  sprawled in one of the wingback chairs in the living room, clean and in clothes that weren’t charred. By the time he’d cleaned himself up, Stefan and Elena had sought their own bed and Bonnie had been taken home. Claire had still been asleep so he’d chosen to nap nearby until she woke, setting a blood bag and a glass next to the couch if she woke and he didn’t hear, trepidation still gnawing insistently at him. 

“Something’s wrong Damon. Claire still hasn’t come around.”

That made Damon snap awake. Surely she’d woken at some point and just gone back to sleep. But the blood bag and the glass were untouched and it didn’t look like she had even moved in her sleep.

“How long was I out?” Damon asked leaning forward. The windows were dark and Damon could make out the first hint of stars in the night sky outside.

“About ten hours. Claire hasn’t moved in all that time. I couldn’t sleep so I stayed up,” Stefan said worriedly. Damon shot him a hateful look. The rest went unsaid. Stefan’s guilt had kept him awake and he’d stayed up worriedly watching over the woman he’d nearly gotten killed. But Damon pushed his anger aside, Stefan was right. Something was very wrong. Claire should have woken up by now.

Damon reached toward Claire and brushed her hair back at the temple. “Come on Claire, wakey, wakey.” She never stirred though her chest still rose and fell in a steady slow rhythm. Damon winced with worry.

“I already tried everything. Shaking her, calling her name. Nothing works,” Stefan said. Damon looked at him askance.

“Why didn’t you wake me up before now?” he bit. “Did you try blood?”

“Not yet. I thought maybe you were right and it was just taking a while for the vervain to get out of her system. But it’s been too long,” Stefan explained. Damon glared at him. He should have woken him long ago if he thought something was wrong with Claire. The fear he’d felt outside the meeting house seized Damon again as he scrambled for the blood bag on the table and hastily poured a measure of it the glass.  He held it near Claire’s face, moving it back and forth beneath her nose.

“Breakfast. O negative, you’re favorite,” he cajoled, hoping the scent of blood would make her awaken but she stayed still as a statue. Damon took it a step further and dipped his finger in the blood, then wiped a smear of it between Claire’s lips. Perhaps she needed more prodding to do the trick.

“Stop teasing me Claire. It’s not funny anymore,” Damon complained aloud as if she might hear him. As if she were playing a cruel joke on him. But the blood smear only left a stain on her mouth, she made no move to lick it away or open her eyes. It was all Damon could do not to panic, to seize her and shake Claire like a rag doll to try to rouse her.

Damon looked down at the glass of blood.

“Maybe it’s because it’s not fresh,” he reasoned. He glanced at Stefan whose ever-broody face was pinched. “Where’s Elena?”

“She’s still asleep.”

“Well get her,” Damon snapped. If Claire needed fresh blood Elena could donate it. She’d done it before and this was partly her fault. Hers and Stefan’s. If Elena hadn’t insisted on going with them, if Stefan hadn’t agreed to it, if Stefan hadn’t let Claire try to get herself killed to save them and deliberately not told him, none of this would be happening.

Stefan looked like he might argue for a moment but then he looked at Claire and did as Damon bid. He went to the foot of the stairs and called up them looking back over his shoulder worriedly. He should be worried, Damon thought. If something was wrong with Claire that couldn’t be fixed…Damon wasn’t sure he wouldn’t kill his brother this time.

It only took a few minutes for Elena to come down, still dressed in her school girl plaid pajamas. “What’s wrong?” she asked tucking her unbrushed hair behind her ears as she joined them her eyes, falling on Claire’s quiet form.

“Claire’s still out. We can’t get her to wake up, not even blood is working. Damon thinks it might be because it’s not fresh,” Stefan began to say about to ask Elena if she would volunteer hers. Damon didn’t bother to wait for him to ask, as soon as Elena was close enough, Damon grabbed her arm and quickly bit her hand pushing it to Claire’s mouth. Elena let out a yip of startled pain and surprise.

Damon!” Stefan yelled in anger. Damon gave him a look that begged him to argue, to give him an excuse to shove a stake into his gut for what he had done, his worry making his betrayal and anger boil to the surface again.

“Ow! You could have asked first,” Elena said crossly but she held her hand still allowing her blood to drip slowly onto Claire’s lips. The ruby droplets slid into Claire’s mouth but she still didn’t stir.

“It’s not working,” Damon said. He knew his voice was strained and frantic but he no longer cared. Something was desperately wrong.

“Maybe,” Elena said as she hesitantly drew her hand away. “Maybe she just needs some more time. The vervain…”

“Should have worked its way out of her system by now. At least enough she would be awake,” Stefan said quietly almost fearfully.

“Then why is she still out?” Elena pressed her hand onto a drink napkin from the table behind the couch.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Stefan admitted.

Damon grabbed Claire’s shoulders and shook her. Hard. “Damn it Claire. This isn’t funny.” Her head shook limply but she didn’t respond at all.  Dread sank into Damon’s bones like poison.

Elena looked stricken by his reaction. He was bordering on the maniacal behavior he’d exhibited when they’d first met. When he’d been desperate to get Katherine out of the tomb that she was never in.

“Wait. Maybe Bonnie can help. She said when Claire healed her she saw what she was going to do. Maybe something Claire did caused this. Or maybe Alexander’s witch did something?”

Damon looked up at her sharply, a horrible notion occurring to him at the mention of the little witch. Claire wasn’t dead or she wasn’t any more dead than a vampire was supposed to be. She was breathing, Damon could hear her heart beating quietly. So why wouldn’t she wake up? A terrible thought crept into his mind. All the strange things he’d felt at the meeting house. The desperate pull he’d experienced, the empty spot inside him the was painfully hollow. Was it connected? Had Alexander’s witch done something to them that had caused this as Elena suggested? Damon looked at Stefan his expression fierce.

“Get Bonnie back here. Now.”

 

***

 

“What happened?”

Damon looked back at the sound of the voice from his place at Claire’s side worriedly holding her hand as if that might somehow work. Next thing he knew he was going to actually believe he could wake her with a kiss. If he had thought it had even a passing chance of working he’d have done it. Bonnie was hurrying over to him unburdened  and looking much better for a good night’s sleep. She’d suffered the least damage of them all in the fight last night and had been restored to perfect health by Claire’s blood within moments.

Stefan stumbled in the door trying to see where he was going with a tall stack of ancient books. Grimoires. Bonnie’s own and every one she’d procured from the The Martin witch family. Inherited might be a better word for it since one of them Damon had accidently incinerated while he was using a spell to try to infiltrate the boarding house in spirit form to free Elijah and the other had been killed outright when he went on a murderous killing spree at the Mystic Grill in revenge for it.

“She won’t wake up. Damon and Stefan have tried everything,” Elena said. She’d bandaged her hand and was pacing around the seating area of the living room, biting her nails apprehensively.

“I’m guessing that means this isn’t normal?” Bonnie suggested.

“No. It’s not normal Bonnie. Now fix her,” Damon snipped. His patience was thin and he showed fear by being gruff and angry.

“I can’t fix her if I don’t know what’s wrong with her, Damon. You could be a little more grateful,” Bonnie shot back petulantly and Damon snarled at her, coming close to pointing out that Bonnie owed Claire her life but the witch had already turned her attention away from him as if he weren’t there after a quick back and forth glance between him and Claire and a fleeting frown. To Stefan she said, “It’s not the vervain?”

Stefan grunted as he set down the last of the grimoires on a nearby table and shook his head. “It can’t be. Some would still be in her system but not enough to cause this.”

“And you’ve never seen anything like this before?”

“No. Never.”

Bonnie looked at Claire and her brow furrowed.  “She’s still alive. I can see her breathing.”

“Can you help her Bonnie? Did you see anything when you touched her that might have caused this?” Elena asked hopefully.

Bonnie shook her head. “I don’t know Elena. I didn’t see anything that should have caused this. Just that she was going to take me and Damon out of the fight while she took care of Alexander and give Stefan the chance to get Elena out no matter what it took with Stefan’s help.”

Damon looked from Bonnie to Stefan and the cold look of hatred made his brother step back a pace. “Yeah. Nothing like your little brother giving your girlfriend a helping hand committing suicide.”

“Damon,” Elena began to admonish him.

“Don’t ‘Damon’ me Elena,” Damon barked. She blinked and looked affronted. “He knew.” Damon’s gaze swiveled to his brother. “You knew what Claire was going to do and you let her. You helped her. You knew she was going to die.”

“No, Damon,” Stefan tried to explain but in that instant Damon couldn’t stand the sound of his brother’s voice. Couldn’t bare all the repressed anger and betrayal or the sight of Claire’s limp body on the couch. His temper snapped.

He was on his brother before anyone had time to react, grabbing him and slamming him into a wall with all the force he had in him. The impact of it shook the floorboards and cracked the wall floor to ceiling. He wrapped his hands around his brother’s throat and squeezed.

“Damon! No!” Elena shrieked.

“This is your fault. You did this,” Damon spat ignoring her. His eyes had shifted and there was a low vicious growl rumbling in his throat.  Stefan scrabbled at Damon’s hands trying to loosen his iron grip, his mouth opening and closing in an attempt to speak.

“Damon, please,” Elena pleaded rushing to him, pulling at his arm frantically.

“How many times Stefan? How many times are you going to help kill the women I love? Wasn’t Katherine enough?” Damon snarled, his grip tightening like a vice. Though it had all been a ruse and Katherine hadn’t died in 1864, it had taken a century and a half to discover it. If not for Katherine’s subterfuge and Damon’s desperate plea to Emily Bennett, she really would have burned inside the church the way Damon had thought she had.

“I couldn’t stop her,” Stefan managed to gasp out. 

“Liar!” Damon snapped.

“She was going to do it no matter what I did,” Stefan rasped.

“You didn’t even try,” Damon seethed.

“It was her choice.”

“Stop it! Both of you. Or so help me I will walk right back out that door and you can figure out what’s wrong with Claire by yourself,” Bonnie demanded.

Damon clenched tighter for an instant, fighting the desire to rip Stefan’s heart out. But Bonnie really would carry through on her threat and Damon knew it. He snarled once with a forceful growl and let go. Stefan dropped to the floor gasping for air while Elena rushed to his aid.

“What is wrong with you!” Elena yelled at Damon angrily. Damon snorted like an agitate animal.

“Claire knew you’d never let her go up against Alexander. That he’d make you choose and you’d die. So she made the choice for you. She always meant to take you out of the fight. Claire used my own morals against me to get me to help her. I could let her sacrifice herself or I could lose you and Elena, there was no way to save all of you. She was playing us both the whole time, Damon,” Stefan said raggedly as he got his bearings again.

“Claire pulled a Katherine?” Elena said in surprise.

“Yes. Only she used it to save us instead of herself. We woefully underestimated her. She’s as good at manipulation as Damon and Katherine.”

Damon scowled deeply holding his temper in check by force of will alone. He didn’t care how it had happened. Stefan should have stopped her by any means necessary. But instead he’d let his morals get in the way of doing what had to be done. Saint Stefan. He flat refused to acknowledge that Claire had used those morals against him knowing Stefan would hold to them no matter what.

“Are you two done trying to kill each other?” Bonnie asked haughtily. Damon gave Stefan another scathing glare.

“For the moment.”

“Good, because I have no idea what’s wrong with Claire. I’m a witch not a vampire biologist. I’m going to need some help.”

“Could it have been Alexander’s witch? A spell or something?” Stefan said trying to avoid Damon’s gaze.

“Not that I know of. She’s dead. Any spell she cast should have broken with her. You have to bind a spell to something for it to work after the witch who cast it is gone. Like your daylight rings or a doppelganger, the way the Sun and the Moon curse was done,” Bonnie said, promptly back on track and pretending Damon hadn’t just come within a hair’s breadth of killing Stefan.

“So it can’t be a spell?” Elena asked returning to the task at hand, though she still cast Damon an angry glance. When Damon tried to return it remorselessly she looked away again unable to meet his gaze and looking like she had been caught doing something shameful.

“No,” Bonnie confirmed.

“That might not strictly be true,” Damon admitted.

“What?” Bonnie asked then shook her head ardently. “I know how magic works Damon.”

“Something happened up there when we were fighting or rather being emotionally blackmailed by Alexander. Claire turned off her humanity..”

“She was only faking it,” Stefan put in. “You saw her.”

“No she wasn’t, because I felt her do it,” Damon insisted. “I thought it was something the witch had done to give Alexander the advantage at first but this wasn’t like anything I’ve ever experienced and you weren’t being affected by it at all. Why would she only target me? I felt every single thing Claire felt like it was me. I felt all her pain and her anger, the despair until I couldn’t take it. It was crippling. And I felt it when she flipped her switch. It was like someone had ripped something out of me and left this huge gaping hole that was just hollow and agonizingly empty. When she flipped it back on a few minutes later it all came flooding back. By the time I came around and realized Claire was still in the Meeting House the hole in me had come back and it happened again once she passed out afterward. It’s still there now.”

Damon carefully left out the insistent pull he’d felt to get to Claire when she’d been inside the Meeting House while it burned. He didn’t mention how he’d felt like something was physically driving him to her and ripping him in two with desperation. It was just too sappy to mention. He didn’t say anything about the silver string he’d swore he’d seen in the heat haze of the meeting house flames that had led him to Claire. It had been a hallucination. He didn’t tell them the fear of losing Claire whatever had pulled at him the way it had, had instilled in him, or that he still felt that fear with terrible intensity.

“Why didn’t you tell us this before now?” Stefan spat.

“Why didn’t you tell me Claire was planning to kill herself?” Damon retorted. “I didn’t think it was important. I figured it was Alexander screwing with us and with him and his witch dead it was over.”

“So you think it was some sort of linking spell?” Bonnie asked.

Damon shrugged. “Katherine did it with Elena. Kill Katherine and Elena died. Kill Elena and Katherine died.”

“Exactly. You’re not dead. If Alexander’s witch had linked you, this wouldn’t be happening. What happens to one happens to the other and you’re just fine. I’ve never heard of a linking spell that would make you feel everything someone else was. So the ‘hole’ only happens when Claire’s humanity is off or when she’s unconscious?”

“Or near death. She was almost dead by the time I found her in the Meeting House,” Damon said darkly. It seemed to renew Elena’s worry.

“You don’t think she’s dying do you Bonnie?”

Bonnie shrugged again. “I honestly don’t know Elena. I don’t think so but this is so far out of my league. If there was just some way to ask her what happened once Stefan left maybe that would give me a clue.”

Damon swallowed hard. Was Claire dying slowly? The way Rose had died of werewolf venom only this was some witchy woo-woo curse? Some last stand crap so Alexander would get his revenge dead or alive? The thought terrified him.

Elena jumped on what Bonnie had said. “That thing where you get in someone’s head? Can’t you get in Claire’s?” She was speaking directly to Damon and he saw Stefan wince with regret and shame for an instant. Even if it could be done, Stefan wouldn’t be able to because of his diet. Damon could.

“No. There’s still too much vervain left in her system. While it might not be enough to disable her it’ll be days before Damon could get in her head,” Stefan said before Damon could answer as if he were trying to make up for his inability by pointing out that Damon couldn’t do it at the moment either. “I don’t think we have that kind of time.”

“What about what you did with Luka?” Elena pressed switching her attention back to Bonnie.

“You mean the trance? I don’t know. Luka was human and he was semi conscious, he could answer the questions I asked him. I don’t even know if it would work on a vampire,” Bonnie said. Damon flinched and Elena looked crestfallen.

“But I could try,” Bonnie quickly added. “She’s weakened by the vervain, maybe that will make her more receptive.” She gave them all a wan smile. “It’s worth a shot. Even if I can’t get her to talk or wake up maybe I can figure out why she’s this way.”

“What do you need?’ Stefan asked.

“Some candles. Five of them. Big ones. And a bowl of water,” Bonnie said. Stefan nodded and went to get what she needed.

“I need her to be on the floor. I need space,” Bonnie said to Damon.

“Right,” Damon said moving to the couch. He gently scooped Claire up, pausing a moment to look down at her placid face with concern as he cradled her in his arms. She looked so inanimate, like a life sized doll.

Elena moved to stand beside Bonnie. “You think it will work?”

“I hope so,” Bonnie said fervently as she watched Damon place Claire on the rug, carefully arranging her limbs in comfortable positions and brushing hair away from her face, lingering far longer than was necessary.

“He really loves her doesn’t he?” Bonnie breathed with a sad smile.

“Yeah. He does,” Elena whispered. Bonnie’s smile widened slightly for an instant and then she frowned again, troubled. Presumably by the possibility the spell might not work.

“I can hear you,” Damon said.

“I don’t care,” Bonnie said back in a gently taunting voice.

“I’m going to help Stefan,” Elena declared once Claire was settled. She trotted out of the room with a hopeful spring in her step. Bonnie went to join Damon on the rug, dropping down at Claire’s head where she’d need to be to start the spell.

Damon looked up at her and with effort swallowed his pride. “Thank you for this.”

“Don’t thank me until it works,” Bonnie said idly, getting comfortable on her knees and dismissing Damon’s gratitude as an offhand comment he didn’t mean.

“No, I mean it Bonnie. Even if this doesn’t work. I know how you feel about vampires. I know you hate me and by extension Claire. I know the only reason you’re doing this is because you owe her for saving your life but I’m still very grateful. I don’t take what you’re doing lightly. So thank you,” Damon said.

He did mean it. Even if the judgmental little witch wouldn’t give Damon a daylight ring for Claire at least she was willing to try to help her when she could be dying for all they knew. Bonnie could have refused to come and no one would have been able to stop her.

Bonnie flushed beneath her caramel complexion and looked stunned. “You’re welcome,” she said softly.  She glanced away from him, her mouth opening again as if she were going to say something more but Stefan had returned with two of the candles needed and the bowl of water. Elena entered the room a moment later carrying the rest of the candles.

Stefan silently handed Bonnie the bowl of water.

“Thanks,” Bonnie murmured. “Now could you place those evenly around the room?” She gestured to the candles Stefan and Elena were holding and the two hastened to do as she asked, placing them so that if they had a line drawn from one to the other it would have formed a star with Bonnie and Claire in the center.

“I’ll get the matches,” Elena said and turned on her bare feet to get them.

“I’ve got it,” Bonnie declared shutting her eyes and concentrating for an instant. The candles flared to life around her.

“I keep forgetting you can do that,” Elena said looking at them. Bonny favored her with a small smile before she took a deep breath shaking her arms in front of her as if she were limbering her wrists and hands up for strenuous activity. “Okay.”

Damon squeezed Claire’s limp hand once with a worried wince and rose to his feet backing out the witch’s way.

“Wish me luck,” Bonnie said fretfully. Then she dipped the fingers of both hands in the water and flicked them to remove any excess.

“Good luck,” Stefan told her, his voice sober. Damon said nothing. He was too tense. Bonnie put her hands on the sides of Claire’s head and sat back on her heels, eyes closed, concentrating. Damon felt a warm hand on his arm and looked to his left. It was Elena. She gave him a thin smile, squeezing briefly in reassurance that he tried to return weakly, then she quickly looked away again her hand dropping away.

Suddenly the candle flames shot sky ward, obeying a witch’s pull on their power and the fireplace roared to life, the fire blazing so brightly Stefan and Damon had to shield their eyes from the intensity for a moment.

“Come on, Claire. Let me in,” Bonnie murmured aloud. There was a tense moment of quiet and Bonnie’s brows pinched with effort.

“I can’t get in. It’s like trying to break through a steel door.”

“You can do it Bonnie,” Elena encouraged her friend quietly. Stefan stood by stone faced  but Damon kept glancing with desperate hope from Bonnie to Claire.

“Hold on,” Bonnie muttered her forehead furrowing deeply. She settled back more firmly on her heels. The flames rose higher still, the candles threatening to scorch the ceiling and the fireplace blazing up until it looked like it might force its way out and turn into an inferno. “I think I’ve got it.”

There was another heavy moment of silence and then, “I’m in,” Bonnie said. “Okay Claire. Wake up. You’ve been asleep long enough.”

Nothing happened but then to the outside eye, except for the candles and the fireplace, nothing had appeared to be happening from the beginning. “Claire? Can you hear me?” Bonnie tried to rouse her.

“Come on Claire. Wake up,” Damon whispered fervently.

“Claire?” Bonnie prodded again. Suddenly the witch’s eyebrows went up in what looked like surprise though her eyes stayed shut and her grip on Claire’s head tightened.

“Oh my God,” Bonnie whispered, her head tilting to the side as if she were confused.

What’s happening?” Elena asked.

“I..” Bonnie began to say and then her whisper became a shout. “Oh my God!”  Bonnie let out a blood-curdling scream. Claire’s body went rigid and arched off the floor as if in the rictus of a brutal seizure.

“Bonnie!” Stefan yelled in worry, springing for her side.

In the next instant, Damon felt something tear through him from the inside out like a bomb had gone off inside his chest. Damon roared with pain, his knees buckling as he was assailed again by a flood of emotion so fierce and so twisted that he couldn’t discern one from the other. Pleasure was pain, love was hate, hope was despair so profound it made his bones ache, peace was unbridled rage, comfort was hunger so terrible that it sucked the breath from him, safety was fear so wild it paralyzed him and made his heart seize in his chest. It all felt like it was going to kill him with the shear intensity of it. Vaguely he heard someone cry his name but he couldn’t have answered them if he’d wanted to. All he could do was _feel,_ scream and pray it killed him quickly.

“Bonnie! Stop!” Stefan yelled at her frantically but she only continued to scream violently. Elena was trying to do something, anything, with Damon who was on his knees wailing so hard it made Stefan’s ears ring.

“Bonnie! Let go!” Stefan yelled again uselessly, shaking her but it was like she couldn’t let go, like she and Claire were locked together. Frantic to stop whatever had happened, whatever had gone so horribly wrong Stefan grabbed Bonnie and jerked her away from Claire.  The witch’s grip on Claire broke and Bonnie’s eyes snapped open with her still yelping as if she were facing down something out of Hell itself. She scrambled away from Stefan, pushing and kicking with her feet as she shoved herself away still crying out. Stefan reached out to her soothingly.

At the same moment Stefan broke the connection between Bonnie and Claire, Damon gave a last scream of agony and toppled forward on the floor panting and gasping. Elena hurriedly gathered him to her, pulling his head into her lap asking him if he were alright. There were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks.

Claire lay as unmoving as ever. Her head lolled to the side and her body limp.

It took a moment but Bonnie came back to herself, her eyes looking around wildly as she gasped for breath and shook with terror.

“Stefan?” she squeaked, as if she weren’t sure he were real or not.

“I’m here,” Stefan assured her and Bonnie gave an inarticulate wail and flung her arms around him in a desperate hug. Stefan barely caught her before she knocked them both over, enveloping her with an expression on consternation. “You okay.”

“No,” Bonnie squeaked again. “But I will be,” she added softly.

“What the hell happened?” Damon groaned.

“I don’t, I don’t… my god. I opened the door and then… It was like being hurled into a tornado full of razorblades,” Bonnie stuttered still shaking like a leaf and clutching Stefan as if her life depended on it.

“I’ll second that,” Damon muttered, levering himself out of a worried Elena’s lap. He looked back toward the rug. “Claire.” He pushed himself up as far as he could, still too weak to even attempt standing and crawled to her, wanting to be sure she was alright or at least wasn’t any worse off than when they’d started.

“You felt it too?” Bonnie asked in a small voice.

Damon leaned over Claire, stroking her hair softly his eyes on her face with disheartened sadness. “Yeah,” he muttered quietly. “I felt it.” No one had to ask if, like before, he had ceased to feel it, if the emptiness had opened back up inside of him. It was clear in the expression on his face.

“Is that how you guys always feel?” Bonnie asked incredulously.

“No. A vampire’s emotions are heightened. We feel everything more intensely, more deeply but that wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen. That was excessive, even for us,” Stefan said.

“Did you find out what’s wrong?” Elena asked hesitantly.  Bonnie swallowed and looked at her mournfully.

“Yes. But you aren’t going to like it.”

Stefan felt Bonnie’s shaking begin to subside to trembling as she prepared to tell them what she’d discovered.

“It’s like she’s in a coma. She can’t wake up even if she wanted to.”

“A coma?” Damon spat incredulously. “Vampires don’t do comas, Bonnie. They’re vampires.”

“I can’t think of another word for it. Claire didn’t just switch off her humanity. She turned it all the way on, off and then on again one after the other. She short-circuited it and now she has no control. Everything is haywire inside and she’s locked in there and can’t get out. She’s completely insane from it. I think the vervain she had in her system is the only reason she didn’t go stark raving mad before she killed Alexander.”

“She expected to die. She couldn’t fool Alexander by pretending to turn off her humanity but she wouldn’t care either way without it. She was going to die anyway so it didn’t matter if she lost her mind,” Elena said with horrified awe.

“Oh my God,” Stefan gasped, stricken all the blood draining from his already pale face.

“Can you fix it?” Damon asked immediately.

“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t even know where to begin and even if I could bring her out of the coma, I couldn’t make her not insane. This hasn’t happened before? Ever?” Bonnie said.

“No. Because none of us would be stupid enough to try it. You’re telling me that Claire is stuck like this? She’s going to be locked in her own head, completely crazy forever?” Damon said his voice quaking until he shook with building grief stricken rage.

“I’m so sorry Damon,” Bonnie said fervently.

Damon whimpered, the sound escaping through his nose with a harsh blast of air. “If she’s insane, locked inside herself… why did I feel it?” Damon demanded to know, refusing to give up or leave a single avenue unexplored. Bonnie shrugged shaking her head at a loss for an answer.

“I don’t know.”

“There has to be something,” Damon insisted.

“What’s wrong with her isn’t magic. It’s not a spell I can undo, Damon,” Bonnie said.

“Don’t tell me that, Bonnie,” Damon said his voice tight as a piano wire. He’d already moved to the balls of his feet without thinking about it. 

“Damon, don’t do anything stupid,” Elena said shakily seeing the building tension in him the way he moved with coiled rage.  He looked over at her coldy expecting to find her staring at him with judgy little eyes but they were soft and warm, glassy with unshed tears. He swallowed and looked down at Claire his head twisting in heartbreak.

“It’s 1864 all over again,” he said brokenly.

It was. The Meeting House instead of Fell’s Church, Claire locked inside herself instead of inside the tomb. Damon wavered between the overwhelming need to kill something in a rage filled outburst of angered grief and sinking to his knees and wailing mournfully.

“No, no Damon,” Elena said shaking her head vehemently. “It’s not.” She began to move toward him but Stefan moved faster. He grasped the front of Damon’s shirt tightly, almost desperately.

“Damon, listen to me. We’ll get her back. I’ll help you.”

Damon shoved him away violently, breaking his hold but used no more strength than a human, pushed Stefan only hard enough he flailed to keep his balance and looked stung.

“Help me?” Damon bit. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

Stefan shook his head guiltily, his mouth half open as he searched for something to say, someway to plead with his brother. Damon swallowed hard again, his face flickering through a dozen emotions. Fighting the urge to lash out. The accusation that this was Stefan’s fault died in his throat.

“I’m sorry, Damon,” Stefan said sorrowfully.

“Don’t. Don’t you dare apologize. It’s too late,” Damon hissed gruffly and Stefan looked wounded.

Damon knelt and pulled Claire into his arms, bundling her against his chest protectively. She never so much as flinched but inside he knew chaos reigned. Damon looked at Bonnie.

“Find something. You have the power of a hundred witches. I don’t care how long it takes or what you have to do. Find something,” Damon commanded. Bonnie opened her mouth to replay but Damon didn’t wait to hear it. He wasn’t sure he could stand to. Without another word, Damon carried Claire away from the spell circle, away from Stefan and away from the sentence of doom that he refused to accept. If it took another 145 years to get Claire back, if it took the rest of eternity, Damon would do it.  


	14. Chapter 14

Damon, wake up.”

Damon made a disgruntled noise and tried to ignore his brother’s voice.  He was still pissed at him and he was still tired. His brother could screw off.

“Damon,” Stefan said more insistently.

“Go away, Stefan,” Damon muttered. He was  sprawled in one of the wingback chairs in the living room, clean and in clothes that weren’t charred. By the time he’d cleaned himself up, Stefan and Elena had sought their own bed and Bonnie had been taken home. Claire had still been asleep so he’d chosen to nap nearby until she woke, setting a blood bag and a glass next to the couch if she woke and he didn’t hear, trepidation still gnawing insistently at him. 

“Something’s wrong Damon. Claire still hasn’t come around.”

That made Damon snap awake. Surely she’d woken at some point and just gone back to sleep. But the blood bag and the glass were untouched and it didn’t look like she had even moved in her sleep.

“How long was I out?” Damon asked leaning forward. The windows were dark and Damon could make out the first hint of stars in the night sky outside.

“About ten hours. Claire hasn’t moved in all that time. I couldn’t sleep so I stayed up,” Stefan said worriedly. Damon shot him a hateful look. The rest went unsaid. Stefan’s guilt had kept him awake and he’d stayed up worriedly watching over the woman he’d nearly gotten killed. But Damon pushed his anger aside, Stefan was right. Something was very wrong. Claire should have woken up by now.

Damon reached toward Claire and brushed her hair back at the temple. “Come on Claire, wakey, wakey.” She never stirred though her chest still rose and fell in a steady slow rhythm. Damon winced with worry.

“I already tried everything. Shaking her, calling her name. Nothing works,” Stefan said. Damon looked at him askance.

“Why didn’t you wake me up before now?” he bit. “Did you try blood?”

“Not yet. I thought maybe you were right and it was just taking a while for the vervain to get out of her system. But it’s been too long,” Stefan explained. Damon glared at him. He should have woken him long ago if he thought something was wrong with Claire. The fear he’d felt outside the meeting house seized Damon again as he scrambled for the blood bag on the table and hastily poured a measure of it the glass.  He held it near Claire’s face, moving it back and forth beneath her nose.

“Breakfast. O negative, you’re favorite,” he cajoled, hoping the scent of blood would make her awaken but she stayed still as a statue. Damon took it a step further and dipped his finger in the blood, then wiped a smear of it between Claire’s lips. Perhaps she needed more prodding to do the trick.

“Stop teasing me Claire. It’s not funny anymore,” Damon complained aloud as if she might hear him. As if she were playing a cruel joke on him. But the blood smear only left a stain on her mouth, she made no move to lick it away or open her eyes. It was all Damon could do not to panic, to seize her and shake Claire like a rag doll to try to rouse her.

Damon looked down at the glass of blood.

“Maybe it’s because it’s not fresh,” he reasoned. He glanced at Stefan whose ever-broody face was pinched. “Where’s Elena?”

“She’s still asleep.”

“Well get her,” Damon snapped. If Claire needed fresh blood Elena could donate it. She’d done it before and this was partly her fault. Hers and Stefan’s. If Elena hadn’t insisted on going with them, if Stefan hadn’t agreed to it, if Stefan hadn’t let Claire try to get herself killed to save them and deliberately not told him, none of this would be happening.

Stefan looked like he might argue for a moment but then he looked at Claire and did as Damon bid. He went to the foot of the stairs and called up them looking back over his shoulder worriedly. He should be worried, Damon thought. If something was wrong with Claire that couldn’t be fixed…Damon wasn’t sure he wouldn’t kill his brother this time.

It only took a few minutes for Elena to come down, still dressed in her school girl plaid pajamas. “What’s wrong?” she asked tucking her unbrushed hair behind her ears as she joined them her eyes, falling on Claire’s quiet form.

“Claire’s still out. We can’t get her to wake up, not even blood is working. Damon thinks it might be because it’s not fresh,” Stefan began to say about to ask Elena if she would volunteer hers. Damon didn’t bother to wait for him to ask, as soon as Elena was close enough, Damon grabbed her arm and quickly bit her hand pushing it to Claire’s mouth. Elena let out a yip of startled pain and surprise.

Damon!” Stefan yelled in anger. Damon gave him a look that begged him to argue, to give him an excuse to shove a stake into his gut for what he had done, his worry making his betrayal and anger boil to the surface again.

“Ow! You could have asked first,” Elena said crossly but she held her hand still allowing her blood to drip slowly onto Claire’s lips. The ruby droplets slid into Claire’s mouth but she still didn’t stir.

“It’s not working,” Damon said. He knew his voice was strained and frantic but he no longer cared. Something was desperately wrong.

“Maybe,” Elena said as she hesitantly drew her hand away. “Maybe she just needs some more time. The vervain…”

“Should have worked its way out of her system by now. At least enough she would be awake,” Stefan said quietly almost fearfully.

“Then why is she still out?” Elena pressed her hand onto a drink napkin from the table behind the couch.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Stefan admitted.

Damon grabbed Claire’s shoulders and shook her. Hard. “Damn it Claire. This isn’t funny.” Her head shook limply but she didn’t respond at all.  Dread sank into Damon’s bones like poison.

Elena looked stricken by his reaction. He was bordering on the maniacal behavior he’d exhibited when they’d first met. When he’d been desperate to get Katherine out of the tomb that she was never in.

“Wait. Maybe Bonnie can help. She said when Claire healed her she saw what she was going to do. Maybe something Claire did caused this. Or maybe Alexander’s witch did something?”

Damon looked up at her sharply, a horrible notion occurring to him at the mention of the little witch. Claire wasn’t dead or she wasn’t any more dead than a vampire was supposed to be. She was breathing, Damon could hear her heart beating quietly. So why wouldn’t she wake up? A terrible thought crept into his mind. All the strange things he’d felt at the meeting house. The desperate pull he’d experienced, the empty spot inside him the was painfully hollow. Was it connected? Had Alexander’s witch done something to them that had caused this as Elena suggested? Damon looked at Stefan his expression fierce.

“Get Bonnie back here. Now.”

 

***

 

“What happened?”

Damon looked back at the sound of the voice from his place at Claire’s side worriedly holding her hand as if that might somehow work. Next thing he knew he was going to actually believe he could wake her with a kiss. If he had thought it had even a passing chance of working he’d have done it. Bonnie was hurrying over to him unburdened  and looking much better for a good night’s sleep. She’d suffered the least damage of them all in the fight last night and had been restored to perfect health by Claire’s blood within moments.

Stefan stumbled in the door trying to see where he was going with a tall stack of ancient books. Grimoires. Bonnie’s own and every one she’d procured from the The Martin witch family. Inherited might be a better word for it since one of them Damon had accidently incinerated while he was using a spell to try to infiltrate the boarding house in spirit form to free Elijah and the other had been killed outright when he went on a murderous killing spree at the Mystic Grill in revenge for it.

“She won’t wake up. Damon and Stefan have tried everything,” Elena said. She’d bandaged her hand and was pacing around the seating area of the living room, biting her nails apprehensively.

“I’m guessing that means this isn’t normal?” Bonnie suggested.

“No. It’s not normal Bonnie. Now fix her,” Damon snipped. His patience was thin and he showed fear by being gruff and angry.

“I can’t fix her if I don’t know what’s wrong with her, Damon. You could be a little more grateful,” Bonnie shot back petulantly and Damon snarled at her, coming close to pointing out that Bonnie owed Claire her life but the witch had already turned her attention away from him as if he weren’t there after a quick back and forth glance between him and Claire and a fleeting frown. To Stefan she said, “It’s not the vervain?”

Stefan grunted as he set down the last of the grimoires on a nearby table and shook his head. “It can’t be. Some would still be in her system but not enough to cause this.”

“And you’ve never seen anything like this before?”

“No. Never.”

Bonnie looked at Claire and her brow furrowed.  “She’s still alive. I can see her breathing.”

“Can you help her Bonnie? Did you see anything when you touched her that might have caused this?” Elena asked hopefully.

Bonnie shook her head. “I don’t know Elena. I didn’t see anything that should have caused this. Just that she was going to take me and Damon out of the fight while she took care of Alexander and give Stefan the chance to get Elena out no matter what it took with Stefan’s help.”

Damon looked from Bonnie to Stefan and the cold look of hatred made his brother step back a pace. “Yeah. Nothing like your little brother giving your girlfriend a helping hand committing suicide.”

“Damon,” Elena began to admonish him.

“Don’t ‘Damon’ me Elena,” Damon barked. She blinked and looked affronted. “He knew.” Damon’s gaze swiveled to his brother. “You knew what Claire was going to do and you let her. You helped her. You knew she was going to die.”

“No, Damon,” Stefan tried to explain but in that instant Damon couldn’t stand the sound of his brother’s voice. Couldn’t bare all the repressed anger and betrayal or the sight of Claire’s limp body on the couch. His temper snapped.

He was on his brother before anyone had time to react, grabbing him and slamming him into a wall with all the force he had in him. The impact of it shook the floorboards and cracked the wall floor to ceiling. He wrapped his hands around his brother’s throat and squeezed.

“Damon! No!” Elena shrieked.

“This is your fault. You did this,” Damon spat ignoring her. His eyes had shifted and there was a low vicious growl rumbling in his throat.  Stefan scrabbled at Damon’s hands trying to loosen his iron grip, his mouth opening and closing in an attempt to speak.

“Damon, please,” Elena pleaded rushing to him, pulling at his arm frantically.

“How many times Stefan? How many times are you going to help kill the women I love? Wasn’t Katherine enough?” Damon snarled, his grip tightening like a vice. Though it had all been a ruse and Katherine hadn’t died in 1864, it had taken a century and a half to discover it. If not for Katherine’s subterfuge and Damon’s desperate plea to Emily Bennett, she really would have burned inside the church the way Damon had thought she had.

“I couldn’t stop her,” Stefan managed to gasp out. 

“Liar!” Damon snapped.

“She was going to do it no matter what I did,” Stefan rasped.

“You didn’t even try,” Damon seethed.

“It was her choice.”

“Stop it! Both of you. Or so help me I will walk right back out that door and you can figure out what’s wrong with Claire by yourself,” Bonnie demanded.

Damon clenched tighter for an instant, fighting the desire to rip Stefan’s heart out. But Bonnie really would carry through on her threat and Damon knew it. He snarled once with a forceful growl and let go. Stefan dropped to the floor gasping for air while Elena rushed to his aid.

“What is wrong with you!” Elena yelled at Damon angrily. Damon snorted like an agitate animal.

“Claire knew you’d never let her go up against Alexander. That he’d make you choose and you’d die. So she made the choice for you. She always meant to take you out of the fight. Claire used my own morals against me to get me to help her. I could let her sacrifice herself or I could lose you and Elena, there was no way to save all of you. She was playing us both the whole time, Damon,” Stefan said raggedly as he got his bearings again.

“Claire pulled a Katherine?” Elena said in surprise.

“Yes. Only she used it to save us instead of herself. We woefully underestimated her. She’s as good at manipulation as Damon and Katherine.”

Damon scowled deeply holding his temper in check by force of will alone. He didn’t care how it had happened. Stefan should have stopped her by any means necessary. But instead he’d let his morals get in the way of doing what had to be done. Saint Stefan. He flat refused to acknowledge that Claire had used those morals against him knowing Stefan would hold to them no matter what.

“Are you two done trying to kill each other?” Bonnie asked haughtily. Damon gave Stefan another scathing glare.

“For the moment.”

“Good, because I have no idea what’s wrong with Claire. I’m a witch not a vampire biologist. I’m going to need some help.”

“Could it have been Alexander’s witch? A spell or something?” Stefan said trying to avoid Damon’s gaze.

“Not that I know of. She’s dead. Any spell she cast should have broken with her. You have to bind a spell to something for it to work after the witch who cast it is gone. Like your daylight rings or a doppelganger, the way the Sun and the Moon curse was done,” Bonnie said, promptly back on track and pretending Damon hadn’t just come within a hair’s breadth of killing Stefan.

“So it can’t be a spell?” Elena asked returning to the task at hand, though she still cast Damon an angry glance. When Damon tried to return it remorselessly she looked away again unable to meet his gaze and looking like she had been caught doing something shameful.

“No,” Bonnie confirmed.

“That might not strictly be true,” Damon admitted.

“What?” Bonnie asked then shook her head ardently. “I know how magic works Damon.”

“Something happened up there when we were fighting or rather being emotionally blackmailed by Alexander. Claire turned off her humanity..”

“She was only faking it,” Stefan put in. “You saw her.”

“No she wasn’t, because I felt her do it,” Damon insisted. “I thought it was something the witch had done to give Alexander the advantage at first but this wasn’t like anything I’ve ever experienced and you weren’t being affected by it at all. Why would she only target me? I felt every single thing Claire felt like it was me. I felt all her pain and her anger, the despair until I couldn’t take it. It was crippling. And I felt it when she flipped her switch. It was like someone had ripped something out of me and left this huge gaping hole that was just hollow and agonizingly empty. When she flipped it back on a few minutes later it all came flooding back. By the time I came around and realized Claire was still in the Meeting House the hole in me had come back and it happened again once she passed out afterward. It’s still there now.”

Damon carefully left out the insistent pull he’d felt to get to Claire when she’d been inside the Meeting House while it burned. He didn’t mention how he’d felt like something was physically driving him to her and ripping him in two with desperation. It was just too sappy to mention. He didn’t say anything about the silver string he’d swore he’d seen in the heat haze of the meeting house flames that had led him to Claire. It had been a hallucination. He didn’t tell them the fear of losing Claire whatever had pulled at him the way it had, had instilled in him, or that he still felt that fear with terrible intensity.

“Why didn’t you tell us this before now?” Stefan spat.

“Why didn’t you tell me Claire was planning to kill herself?” Damon retorted. “I didn’t think it was important. I figured it was Alexander screwing with us and with him and his witch dead it was over.”

“So you think it was some sort of linking spell?” Bonnie asked.

Damon shrugged. “Katherine did it with Elena. Kill Katherine and Elena died. Kill Elena and Katherine died.”

“Exactly. You’re not dead. If Alexander’s witch had linked you, this wouldn’t be happening. What happens to one happens to the other and you’re just fine. I’ve never heard of a linking spell that would make you feel everything someone else was. So the ‘hole’ only happens when Claire’s humanity is off or when she’s unconscious?”

“Or near death. She was almost dead by the time I found her in the Meeting House,” Damon said darkly. It seemed to renew Elena’s worry.

“You don’t think she’s dying do you Bonnie?”

Bonnie shrugged again. “I honestly don’t know Elena. I don’t think so but this is so far out of my league. If there was just some way to ask her what happened once Stefan left maybe that would give me a clue.”

Damon swallowed hard. Was Claire dying slowly? The way Rose had died of werewolf venom only this was some witchy woo-woo curse? Some last stand crap so Alexander would get his revenge dead or alive? The thought terrified him.

Elena jumped on what Bonnie had said. “That thing where you get in someone’s head? Can’t you get in Claire’s?” She was speaking directly to Damon and he saw Stefan wince with regret and shame for an instant. Even if it could be done, Stefan wouldn’t be able to because of his diet. Damon could.

“No. There’s still too much vervain left in her system. While it might not be enough to disable her it’ll be days before Damon could get in her head,” Stefan said before Damon could answer as if he were trying to make up for his inability by pointing out that Damon couldn’t do it at the moment either. “I don’t think we have that kind of time.”

“What about what you did with Luka?” Elena pressed switching her attention back to Bonnie.

“You mean the trance? I don’t know. Luka was human and he was semi conscious, he could answer the questions I asked him. I don’t even know if it would work on a vampire,” Bonnie said. Damon flinched and Elena looked crestfallen.

“But I could try,” Bonnie quickly added. “She’s weakened by the vervain, maybe that will make her more receptive.” She gave them all a wan smile. “It’s worth a shot. Even if I can’t get her to talk or wake up maybe I can figure out why she’s this way.”

“What do you need?’ Stefan asked.

“Some candles. Five of them. Big ones. And a bowl of water,” Bonnie said. Stefan nodded and went to get what she needed.

“I need her to be on the floor. I need space,” Bonnie said to Damon.

“Right,” Damon said moving to the couch. He gently scooped Claire up, pausing a moment to look down at her placid face with concern as he cradled her in his arms. She looked so inanimate, like a life sized doll.

Elena moved to stand beside Bonnie. “You think it will work?”

“I hope so,” Bonnie said fervently as she watched Damon place Claire on the rug, carefully arranging her limbs in comfortable positions and brushing hair away from her face, lingering far longer than was necessary.

“He really loves her doesn’t he?” Bonnie breathed with a sad smile.

“Yeah. He does,” Elena whispered. Bonnie’s smile widened slightly for an instant and then she frowned again, troubled. Presumably by the possibility the spell might not work.

“I can hear you,” Damon said.

“I don’t care,” Bonnie said back in a gently taunting voice.

“I’m going to help Stefan,” Elena declared once Claire was settled. She trotted out of the room with a hopeful spring in her step. Bonnie went to join Damon on the rug, dropping down at Claire’s head where she’d need to be to start the spell.

Damon looked up at her and with effort swallowed his pride. “Thank you for this.”

“Don’t thank me until it works,” Bonnie said idly, getting comfortable on her knees and dismissing Damon’s gratitude as an offhand comment he didn’t mean.

“No, I mean it Bonnie. Even if this doesn’t work. I know how you feel about vampires. I know you hate me and by extension Claire. I know the only reason you’re doing this is because you owe her for saving your life but I’m still very grateful. I don’t take what you’re doing lightly. So thank you,” Damon said.

He did mean it. Even if the judgmental little witch wouldn’t give Damon a daylight ring for Claire at least she was willing to try to help her when she could be dying for all they knew. Bonnie could have refused to come and no one would have been able to stop her.

Bonnie flushed beneath her caramel complexion and looked stunned. “You’re welcome,” she said softly.  She glanced away from him, her mouth opening again as if she were going to say something more but Stefan had returned with two of the candles needed and the bowl of water. Elena entered the room a moment later carrying the rest of the candles.

Stefan silently handed Bonnie the bowl of water.

“Thanks,” Bonnie murmured. “Now could you place those evenly around the room?” She gestured to the candles Stefan and Elena were holding and the two hastened to do as she asked, placing them so that if they had a line drawn from one to the other it would have formed a star with Bonnie and Claire in the center.

“I’ll get the matches,” Elena said and turned on her bare feet to get them.

“I’ve got it,” Bonnie declared shutting her eyes and concentrating for an instant. The candles flared to life around her.

“I keep forgetting you can do that,” Elena said looking at them. Bonny favored her with a small smile before she took a deep breath shaking her arms in front of her as if she were limbering her wrists and hands up for strenuous activity. “Okay.”

Damon squeezed Claire’s limp hand once with a worried wince and rose to his feet backing out the witch’s way.

“Wish me luck,” Bonnie said fretfully. Then she dipped the fingers of both hands in the water and flicked them to remove any excess.

“Good luck,” Stefan told her, his voice sober. Damon said nothing. He was too tense. Bonnie put her hands on the sides of Claire’s head and sat back on her heels, eyes closed, concentrating. Damon felt a warm hand on his arm and looked to his left. It was Elena. She gave him a thin smile, squeezing briefly in reassurance that he tried to return weakly, then she quickly looked away again her hand dropping away.

Suddenly the candle flames shot sky ward, obeying a witch’s pull on their power and the fireplace roared to life, the fire blazing so brightly Stefan and Damon had to shield their eyes from the intensity for a moment.

“Come on, Claire. Let me in,” Bonnie murmured aloud. There was a tense moment of quiet and Bonnie’s brows pinched with effort.

“I can’t get in. It’s like trying to break through a steel door.”

“You can do it Bonnie,” Elena encouraged her friend quietly. Stefan stood by stone faced  but Damon kept glancing with desperate hope from Bonnie to Claire.

“Hold on,” Bonnie muttered her forehead furrowing deeply. She settled back more firmly on her heels. The flames rose higher still, the candles threatening to scorch the ceiling and the fireplace blazing up until it looked like it might force its way out and turn into an inferno. “I think I’ve got it.”

There was another heavy moment of silence and then, “I’m in,” Bonnie said. “Okay Claire. Wake up. You’ve been asleep long enough.”

Nothing happened but then to the outside eye, except for the candles and the fireplace, nothing had appeared to be happening from the beginning. “Claire? Can you hear me?” Bonnie tried to rouse her.

“Come on Claire. Wake up,” Damon whispered fervently.

“Claire?” Bonnie prodded again. Suddenly the witch’s eyebrows went up in what looked like surprise though her eyes stayed shut and her grip on Claire’s head tightened.

“Oh my God,” Bonnie whispered, her head tilting to the side as if she were confused.

What’s happening?” Elena asked.

“I..” Bonnie began to say and then her whisper became a shout. “Oh my God!”  Bonnie let out a blood-curdling scream. Claire’s body went rigid and arched off the floor as if in the rictus of a brutal seizure.

“Bonnie!” Stefan yelled in worry, springing for her side.

In the next instant, Damon felt something tear through him from the inside out like a bomb had gone off inside his chest. Damon roared with pain, his knees buckling as he was assailed again by a flood of emotion so fierce and so twisted that he couldn’t discern one from the other. Pleasure was pain, love was hate, hope was despair so profound it made his bones ache, peace was unbridled rage, comfort was hunger so terrible that it sucked the breath from him, safety was fear so wild it paralyzed him and made his heart seize in his chest. It all felt like it was going to kill him with the shear intensity of it. Vaguely he heard someone cry his name but he couldn’t have answered them if he’d wanted to. All he could do was _feel,_ scream and pray it killed him quickly.

“Bonnie! Stop!” Stefan yelled at her frantically but she only continued to scream violently. Elena was trying to do something, anything, with Damon who was on his knees wailing so hard it made Stefan’s ears ring.

“Bonnie! Let go!” Stefan yelled again uselessly, shaking her but it was like she couldn’t let go, like she and Claire were locked together. Frantic to stop whatever had happened, whatever had gone so horribly wrong Stefan grabbed Bonnie and jerked her away from Claire.  The witch’s grip on Claire broke and Bonnie’s eyes snapped open with her still yelping as if she were facing down something out of Hell itself. She scrambled away from Stefan, pushing and kicking with her feet as she shoved herself away still crying out. Stefan reached out to her soothingly.

At the same moment Stefan broke the connection between Bonnie and Claire, Damon gave a last scream of agony and toppled forward on the floor panting and gasping. Elena hurriedly gathered him to her, pulling his head into her lap asking him if he were alright. There were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks.

Claire lay as unmoving as ever. Her head lolled to the side and her body limp.

It took a moment but Bonnie came back to herself, her eyes looking around wildly as she gasped for breath and shook with terror.

“Stefan?” she squeaked, as if she weren’t sure he were real or not.

“I’m here,” Stefan assured her and Bonnie gave an inarticulate wail and flung her arms around him in a desperate hug. Stefan barely caught her before she knocked them both over, enveloping her with an expression on consternation. “You okay.”

“No,” Bonnie squeaked again. “But I will be,” she added softly.

“What the hell happened?” Damon groaned.

“I don’t, I don’t… my god. I opened the door and then… It was like being hurled into a tornado full of razorblades,” Bonnie stuttered still shaking like a leaf and clutching Stefan as if her life depended on it.

“I’ll second that,” Damon muttered, levering himself out of a worried Elena’s lap. He looked back toward the rug. “Claire.” He pushed himself up as far as he could, still too weak to even attempt standing and crawled to her, wanting to be sure she was alright or at least wasn’t any worse off than when they’d started.

“You felt it too?” Bonnie asked in a small voice.

Damon leaned over Claire, stroking her hair softly his eyes on her face with disheartened sadness. “Yeah,” he muttered quietly. “I felt it.” No one had to ask if, like before, he had ceased to feel it, if the emptiness had opened back up inside of him. It was clear in the expression on his face.

“Is that how you guys always feel?” Bonnie asked incredulously.

“No. A vampire’s emotions are heightened. We feel everything more intensely, more deeply but that wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen. That was excessive, even for us,” Stefan said.

“Did you find out what’s wrong?” Elena asked hesitantly.  Bonnie swallowed and looked at her mournfully.

“Yes. But you aren’t going to like it.”

Stefan felt Bonnie’s shaking begin to subside to trembling as she prepared to tell them what she’d discovered.

“It’s like she’s in a coma. She can’t wake up even if she wanted to.”

“A coma?” Damon spat incredulously. “Vampires don’t do comas, Bonnie. They’re vampires.”

“I can’t think of another word for it. Claire didn’t just switch off her humanity. She turned it all the way on, off and then on again one after the other. She short-circuited it and now she has no control. Everything is haywire inside and she’s locked in there and can’t get out. She’s completely insane from it. I think the vervain she had in her system is the only reason she didn’t go stark raving mad before she killed Alexander.”

“She expected to die. She couldn’t fool Alexander by pretending to turn off her humanity but she wouldn’t care either way without it. She was going to die anyway so it didn’t matter if she lost her mind,” Elena said with horrified awe.

“Oh my God,” Stefan gasped, stricken all the blood draining from his already pale face.

“Can you fix it?” Damon asked immediately.

“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t even know where to begin and even if I could bring her out of the coma, I couldn’t make her not insane. This hasn’t happened before? Ever?” Bonnie said.

“No. Because none of us would be stupid enough to try it. You’re telling me that Claire is stuck like this? She’s going to be locked in her own head, completely crazy forever?” Damon said his voice quaking until he shook with building grief stricken rage.

“I’m so sorry Damon,” Bonnie said fervently.

Damon whimpered, the sound escaping through his nose with a harsh blast of air. “If she’s insane, locked inside herself… why did I feel it?” Damon demanded to know, refusing to give up or leave a single avenue unexplored. Bonnie shrugged shaking her head at a loss for an answer.

“I don’t know.”

“There has to be something,” Damon insisted.

“What’s wrong with her isn’t magic. It’s not a spell I can undo, Damon,” Bonnie said.

“Don’t tell me that, Bonnie,” Damon said his voice tight as a piano wire. He’d already moved to the balls of his feet without thinking about it. 

“Damon, don’t do anything stupid,” Elena said shakily seeing the building tension in him the way he moved with coiled rage.  He looked over at her coldy expecting to find her staring at him with judgy little eyes but they were soft and warm, glassy with unshed tears. He swallowed and looked down at Claire his head twisting in heartbreak.

“It’s 1864 all over again,” he said brokenly.

It was. The Meeting House instead of Fell’s Church, Claire locked inside herself instead of inside the tomb. Damon wavered between the overwhelming need to kill something in a rage-filled outburst of angered grief and sinking to his knees and wailing mournfully.

“No, no Damon,” Elena said shaking her head vehemently. “It’s not.” She began to move toward him but Stefan moved faster. He grasped the front of Damon’s shirt tightly, almost desperately.

“Damon, listen to me. We’ll get her back. I’ll help you.”

Damon shoved him away violently, breaking his hold but used no more strength than a human, pushed Stefan only hard enough he flailed to keep his balance and looked stung.

“Help me?” Damon bit. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

Stefan shook his head guiltily, his mouth half open as he searched for something to say, some way to plead with his brother. Damon swallowed hard again, his face flickering through a dozen emotions. Fighting the urge to lash out. The accusation that this was Stefan’s fault died in his throat.

“I’m sorry, Damon,” Stefan said sorrowfully.

“Don’t. Don’t you dare apologize. It’s too late,” Damon hissed gruffly and Stefan looked wounded.

Damon knelt and pulled Claire into his arms, bundling her against his chest protectively. She never so much as flinched but inside he knew chaos reigned. Damon looked at Bonnie.

“Find something. You have the power of a hundred witches. I don’t care how long it takes or what you have to do. Find something,” Damon commanded. Bonnie opened her mouth to reply but Damon didn’t wait to hear it. He wasn’t sure he could stand to. Without another word, Damon carried Claire away from the spell circle, away from Stefan and away from the sentence of doom that he refused to accept. If it took another 145 years to get Claire back, if it took the rest of eternity, Damon would do it. 

 

***

The three of them, vampire, witch and human, watched Damon carry Claire away with morose futility. The candles and fireplace had gone out when the spell broke casting the room in shadow that was penetrated by the faint beams of moonlight creeping through the curtains.

“Damon’s right,” Stefan said quietly. “This is my fault.”

“No,” Elena said shaking her head as she went to him.

“I should have stopped her,” Stefan insisted.

“You couldn’t have. She would have found a way to do it no matter what you did,” Elena consoled. She caressed his face gently.

“I should have tried,” Stefan said, unwilling to accept the comfort Elena offered. “I didn’t know this would happen. I thought I would have time to go back.”

“You respected her choice.”

“Look how well that turned out.”

“Elena’s right Stefan,” Bonnie put in, but her gaze was still on the stair where Damon had gone with a look of consternation on her face.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Elena said, brushing his hair back with her fingers. “Don’t forget that.”

Stefan gave her a shaky smile. “Okay,” he agreed though he didn’t believe it for a second. He’d done it again, for the same reason. He’d thought he was doing what was right and the woman Damon loved hung in the balance because of it. Damon was never going to forgive him.

“He was right that we can’t give up though. There has to be something we can do,” Elena insisted. Bonnie tore her gaze from the stairs with an effort.

“Of course we can’t,” Bonnie agreed heartfelt. Then sadly, “But I have no idea where to start. Even if I find a way to wake Claire up…every second she’s like this she only gets crazier.”

Stefan winced regretfully, deep guilt making his chest feel tight as Elena wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. Stefan returned it needing her warmth, her love in that moment. He prayed Bonnie was wrong. Please let her be wrong. Damon would hate him forever and he’d never be able to make up for it if she weren’t.  The three of them cast another worried glance up the stairs. Please let her be wrong.

 

***

Over the course of the next day, time passed at a crawl. Bonnie had retired to the study, burying herself amid the stacks of grimories in the hopes of finding an answer to their dilemma. None of them could help her in her search since the grimoires were written in a language only witches could read, leaving Stefan and Elena to wait in anxious quiet.

As for Damon, he stayed in his room save for his short trip to tie up the remaining loose ends of Alexander’s destruction with Sheriff Forbes and to ask Bonnie if she’d found anything. Every time she’d tell him ‘Not yet’ and he’d go away again without another word. Other than that, he spoke to no one and no one was brave enough to try to encroach on his solitude or the small territory of his room, which he guarded with an unwavering vigilance, for fear that he would snap and do something rash and impulsive. Like kill Stefan.

None of them except Elena.

It had taken her a long time to work up the courage to brave the possibility of Damon’s wrath. By the time she could make herself try the day was nearly gone. Hesitantly she knocked on his door but he didn’t answer so with a deep breath of resolve she tried the knob. The door opened as hesitantly as she felt, as if it were afraid to let her in.

She stepped carefully across the threshold, eyes searching furtively for him. He was across the room, a glass of bourbon in one hand, the other braced on the frame of the opened doors that let out onto his balcony, staring out at the setting sun. The curtains were drawn, allowing only a narrow swatch of sunlight in that touched only him.  If things weren’t so terribly bleak it would have been a beautiful scene with Damon in his palate of dark colors against the roses, yellows, reds and oranges.

“What do you want Elena?” he asked, never turning as he took a swallow of bourbon.

“I wanted to see how you were doing,” she admitted cautiously. 

Damon looked behind him then, toward his bed where Claire lay, tucked beneath the sumptuous covers like an enchanted princess. There was a chair drawn close to the bed, the side table nearest it scattered with empty liquor bottles and half-used blood bags. Claire was paler than normal and her breathing was shallow.  Unable to feed, she was slowly shutting down again. Within a few more days she’d begin to desiccate. Damon winced and looked away, his gaze returning to the sunset outside.

“How do you think I’m doing?” he muttered darkly.

“I think you’re in pain,” Elena said moving forward a few careful steps.  He turned around then.

“I appreciate the gesture but I’m fine,” Damon said going from distantly open to walled off from her in a heartbeat.

“You know I don’t believe that,” Elena said creeping closer.

“Go back downstairs Elena,” Damon said tightly. “There’s been enough doom and gloom for one day. I don’t need or want anymore.”

“I’m your friend, Damon,” Elena said ignoring his demand and going to stand beside him. He looked her up and down, taking in her outfit. She was wearing one of the blouses Claire had gotten her, one of the ones she hadn’t been able to choose between. He frowned slightly but he didn’t lash out, didn’t scream at her to leave.

“I’m well aware of that, Elena,” he said, downing more of his quickly disappearing bourbon.

“And a friend usually knows when their friend is hurting,” Elena offered.

“What do you want me to say? That I’m upset? That I love her? That I can’t stand to lose her?” Damon spat, his emotions surfacing suddenly.  Elena wasn’t sure if he were about to lash out in rage or burst into tears.

“I don’t want you to say anything Damon. I just want you to know you’re not alone,” she said and without hesitating or asking permission, she slid her arms around him, hugging him tight. For a moment, he went rigid as steel and Elena thought he would push her away but then he relaxed and his arms went around her.  His chin settled on her shoulder and she felt him turn his face into her hair. She heard what sounded suspiciously like a sniffle and knew if she looked up at him there would be the tears he kept fiercely fighting against in his eyes.

Damon pulled back from her but he didn’t break the hug, his gaze going again to the swiftly setting sun. “Claire loved sunlit summer picnics,” he said as if he weren’t really talking to her, that his internal thoughts had only relayed themselves unwillingly to his lips. “That was what she missed most about being human. The sun.”

“I know,” Elena said. “Alexander told me.”

“I wanted to give it back to her but I couldn’t even do that,” Damon admitted brokenly. Elena looked up at him, wanting to comfort him more in some way. But when her eyes met his she couldn’t hold his gaze. She looked down and pulled away.

Damon regarded her for a moment before speaking. “There you go again. Ever since the Meeting House once second you can look at me the next you can’t. Claire isn’t all you and Alexander talked about.”

Elena felt herself begin to shift from foot to foot. Fidgety, she shoved her hair behind her ears and pretended to find the toe of her shoe fascinating. She knew what he meant implicitly. The compulsion after Alexander had torn her vervain necklace from her throat. Alexander’s declaration and her admittal that he had forced her to tell him the truth. Whatever that was.

She’d meant what she’d said. She didn’t know what she felt for Damon. It was there but she refused to give it a name because more than anything in the world she told herself she was in love with Stefan. Elena supposed the necklace, a gift from Stefan, had been destroyed in the fire along with the house, nothing but a bit of slag now.  She would miss it.

“If you mean Alexander compelling me,” Elena said resolutely, “Then yes. He did and I did admit that I…”

“Feel something for me?” Damon finished.

“Yes. I do. I care about you. You’re my friend,” Elena said as if, if she repeated it enough she could make the sliver of doubt inside her that what she’d said under Alexander’s control meant what she insisted it did.

“Then why can’t you look at me without looking like you’ve been caught doing something you shouldn’t have?”

“I’m not,” Elena insisted.

Damon looked contemplative for a moment then he winced again, his eyes growing misty. He looked over at Claire and let out a long sigh. “What am I supposed to do?” he whispered. It sounded so unlike him, so plaintive that it brought tears to Elena’s eyes, made her ache for him and despite her recurring avoidance of his gaze she embraced him again and held him, her head pressed to his chest. She could hear the quiet beat of his heart against her ear as he let her comfort him.

“Love her. Don’t give up. We’ll find a way. We always do,” she promised.  Elena prayed she was right. Please let her be right.

 

***

 

Stefan found Bonnie exactly where he’d left her. Smack in the middle of a pile of grimoires that were haphazardly stacked in no discernible order as she flitted from one to another with all the concentration of a 1st year Medical Student in danger of failing their entrance exams. She was even in the same clothes. She looked tired and worn. Stefan wasn’t even sure when she’d eaten last or if she’d slept at all.

Another night and day had passed and night was again coming on them quickly. Time seemed to run both slower than was bearable and faster than they could keep up. Waiting and wondering made the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room sound loud as the ticking of a bomb but by the same token the bomb’s timer was running out faster than they could find an answer.

“I thought you might like some coffee,” Stefan announced himself. Bonnie peered over the cityscape of books around her and gave him a thin smile. Her eyes were bloodshot from all the reading.

“Thanks,” she said as he moved over to hand her the mug of fresh coffee. She took it and set it down without even taking a sip, returning to her books.

“You should get some rest,” Stefan suggested with concern. He was as anxious to find a way to save Claire as anyone but he didn’t want Bonnie to wear herself to nothing in the process.

“I got a few hours earlier,” she dismissed, never looking up. She flipped a page sharply and started perusing the next one with purpose, a tiny line etched between her brows.

“When’s the last time you ate?” Stefan asked finding a couple of inches of desk space to prop his hip on.

“Elena brought me a bagel,” Bonnie muttered still working. Stefan glanced around at the surface of the desk for evidence of said bagel and found it, one or two bites missing, on a saucer shoved off to the side. He gave Bonnie a sidelong look but his attention was caught by the small velvet covered box next to the saucer, wedged there as if it had been pushed out of the way and forgotten. He reached for it, picking it up.

“What’s this?” he asked. It was a hinged box and he knew what the box was for. It was a ring box but he didn’t know what it had to do with what Bonnie was doing. Bonnie glanced up for half a second.

“It’s Damon’s.”

Damon’s? What did Damon need a ring box for? Perplexed Stefan opened the box while Bonnie paid him no attention. Stefan’s normally brooding brows shot up in mild surprise. He looked at the finely crafted silver confection. The bird’s tiny eye of diamond glinted back at him as it coiled possessively around its bit of lapis lazuli. It was beautiful.

“Is this a daylight ring?” Stefan asked. 

Bonnie stopped what she was doing long enough to answer him. “Not yet,” she said. “Damon wanted me to make one for Claire but I …” She trailed off meekly and glued herself back to the book in front of her.

“She saved your life,” Stefan said gently.  Bonnie bowed her head further over her book.

“I know,” she whispered.

Stefan gave the intricate piece a last look and closed the box, deliberately placing it near Bonnie’s hand and changed the subject. He didn’t have to say anything, it hung in the air between them.

“Find anything?” he asked instead. Then Bonnie came to life with frustration. She flopped the book down, letting it smack the wood of the desk with a dull thud and waved at it with irritation.

“No. Nothing. Not a single thing. Nothing about humanity switches or vampire comas or silver threads or anything!”

Stefan almost let her comment go as the ravings of a frustrated mind, his heart sinking at the news but for the last bit.

“Wait. Silver thread? What’s that got to do with anything?”

Bonnie cringed again. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

“Bonnie,” Stefan said reproachfully. Bonnie’s face pinched in chagrin.

“I don’t suppose you’d pretend you didn’t hear that?” Stefan just looked at her.  She sighed heavily.

“I didn’t want to say anything before because I don’t know why I’m seeing it.”

“Seeing it?”

“Yes. I thought at first I was seeing things but I keep seeing it. I seem to be the only one who can. Every time Claire and Damon are in the same room with each other there’s this almost phantom silver string between them.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before now?” Stefan asked careful not to sound accusatory. He knew Bonnie wouldn’t keep something a secret without a good reason.

“And have Damon fly off the handle when my eyes might have just been playing tricks on me?” Bonnie said. 

Stefan half nodded with agreement. Damon would have had a fit. Damon despised not knowing what was going on or why. Some ghost string floating around tethered to him and Claire would have set him off like a firecracker.

“Do you think it has anything to do with what’s wrong with Claire?” Stefan asked crossing his arms over his chest thoughtfully. Bonnie shook her head.

“No. It’s been there since before we went to the Meeting House. It might have been there all along since I’m the only one who can see it. It might be why Damon keeps feeling what Claire’s feeling though.”

“What is it?”

Bonnie shrugged, her arms wide before letting them fall on her lap. “I have no idea.”

“Magic?”

“No. It’s just there. It’s not magic that I can tell.”

Stefan’s brow furrowed in contemplation but Bonnie gave another blustering sigh and flopped back in the desk chair wearily. “But I’ll tell you one thing. These books are totally useless. Magic is usually meant for harming or destroying vampires not helping them.”

“Well there’s the daylight rings like Emily Bennett made,” Stefan mused, glancing toward the ring box on the desk and then down at his own hand where his daylight ring resided.

“Yeah but Emily was working for Katherine,” Bonnie said absently.

“Emily,” Stefan said suddenly. Bonnie looked over at him, her green eyes going wide thinking the same thing. She was half way out of her chair before Stefan could move.

“I’ll drive,” Stefan said on her heels. Bonnie was already sprinting for the door.

 

***

 

By the time Stefan and Bonnie reached their destination it was well and truly dark. It made the abandoned antebellum cottage with its overgrowth of vines and kudzu they were headed for look even more ominous that usual. It was eerily quiet, save for the heartfelt and some how deeply sad sound of a mockingbird reluctant to find a roost for the night imitating a nightingale warbling close by. Stefan wondered where it had learned the bit of birdsong. Nightingales weren’t native to America.

He and Bonnie trekked across the grass and up the stairs of the small cottage with solemn propriety. This place was a place of power, scarred and marked by the deaths of a hundred witches who had been burned at the stake here over a hundred years ago, not long after the vampire massacre in 1864. Stefan always felt like he was invading someone’s privacy when he came here and he probably was.

The spirits of the witches who had died here remained, forever tied to it and fiercely protective of it. In fact they were incredibly picky about who they let enter the cottage. Other witches, humans with no ill intent and Stefan were the only ones that had ever been allowed in. The one time Damon had attempted to, they’d disabled his daylight ring and sent him dashing out the door again to avoid being incinerated.

But then that might just be Emily’s doing. Despite his century and half long protection of her bloodline, Emily Bennett held no love for Stefan’s brother and had actively thwarted him, for good and ill, several times. Emily was why they were here. If anyone would have an answer, it would be Emily. If she would help them at all.

They made their way inside, the dust on the half empty shelves tickling Stefan’s nose and the old floorboards creaking beneath their feet. Candles inhabited the floor, the fireplace mantle, even the empty spaces on the shelves.

Bonnie light them with a thought save one, casting the room in a pale yellow glow. The unlit candle she placed in the middle of the floor. Stefan stood by quietly.

“I’m not sure if this is going to work,” Bonnie admitted as she lit the last candle.

“You’ve done a séance before right? Contacted Emily Bennett? Maybe one of the witches will know how to help Claire,” Stefan said encouragingly.

“Let’s just hope they want to,” Bonnie said. Then she stood back from the candle, took a deep breath and shut her eyes. This spell didn’t require much in the way of materials, it was the place and those who were bound here that was important.

“Phesmatos manex un domo hax, fero adiuvex,” Bonnie chanted quietly.  “Phesmatos manex, un domo hax, fero adiuvex.”

Stefan waited anxiously as the candles flared higher in the now familiar response to a magic working.  A whisper of voices began, so faint even Stefan couldn’t pick up what they were saying with his sensitive hearing.

“Bonnie?” he ventured as the flames went out and flared to life again. “Bonnie?”

Bonnie’s eyes opened but her entire countenance was different. Gone was the casual relaxed stance and the usually peppy demeanor. Instead, she held herself straight and tall. Forebodingly so, with the air of someone who never moved without deliberation or thought and a touch of prideful arrogance.

“Emily,” she said. Even her voice was different. Bonnie’s voice was slightly gravelly with a hint of brightness in it. Now it was soft and measured. She gazed at him a moment unblinking and then her chin lifted haughtily. The whispering continued though it became fainter.

“Why have you come here Stefan?”

“I need your help,” he said. She stood there silently, obviously waiting for him to continue one prideful brow arched.

“I need to know if there’s a spell that can heal a vampire who has broken their humanity switch,” he said hesitantly.

She looked as if she were considering the request for a moment and then said simply and without feeling. “No.”

Stefan’s face fell.

“Nature ensures a balance to everything.”

“Is that true or are you just saying no because it’s for someone Damon cares about?” Stefan asked. He knew he didn’t have to say it. Emily would already know the truth of it. There was no point in lying to a witch as powerful as her.

“Perhaps it is her time to die,” she said evenly. “Perhaps he should end her misery.”

“No,” Stefan said with a sorrowful shake of his head saddened that Emliy’s hatred for his brother ran so deep that she would suggest the only recourse was to put Claire out of her misery. “That’s not balance. That’s punishment.”

“Mmm,” she said archly her chin rising higher. “I will not give you what you want.”

“So you’re saying that there’s an answer to give?” Stefan prodded heedless of the possible danger to himself. Emily could destroy him where he stood if she chose but he couldn’t go back without an answer. He couldn’t tell Damon it was too late to save Claire. Emily looked back at him through Bonnie’s eyes blankly.

“Please,” Stefan pleaded. “If you know something just tell me. Help me save Claire. She’s not evil.” She stood there a moment longer, unmoved and then yelled, collapsing to her knees and holding her head. Emily had fled and now there was only Bonnie again.

“Bonnie?” Stefan said worriedly, his hand reaching for her elbow to support her. Her other hand was clasped painfully to her head. The whispering got louder again, angry.

“They don’t want us here. They think I’m abusing their power.  Well, some of them do. They’re arguing,” Bonnie gasped, her face pinched with pain.

“They know something. They just don’t want to tell me,” Stefan said.

“Yeah,” Bonnie agreed as the whispering intensified and Stefan got the distinct impression he was in a room full of people vehemently screaming at each other.

“Wait,” Bonnie said. She looked off in the distance as if she were listening to them in a way he couldn’t. Her eyebrows went up in surprise and then immediately dropped again in confusion. “I don’t understand,” she said to the air. The whispering became more insistent, urgent. As if they were saying something there was little time to impart.

“Okay… but…,” Bonnie said to no one. The whispering started to become angry again.

“Okay. Yes! Yes!” Bonnie said frantically trying to appease them. Then so suddenly it left a void of sound, the whispering stopped and the candles snuffed out plunging them into darkness.

“I got it,” Bonnie said getting to her feet shakily.

“You got it?” Stefan asked disbelieving. Bonnie smiled at him.

“I got it.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Stefan said. He had the feeling that if they stayed a moment longer than they had to someone would force them out. Unpleasantly.

 He and Bonnie left the cottage quickly. No sooner than they stepped out the door did it slam with a tremendous bang behind them. Bonnie looked back at.

“I think Emily is mad at me.”

“She’ll get over it,” Stefan assured her. They left hurriedly.

 

***

Bonnie walked quickly up the drive for the door of the boarding house with Stefan trailing more sedately in her wake. He wished he could be as excited as she was but he couldn’t. He was thrilled that they’d found a way to save Claire, whatever it was, but at the same time he couldn’t help but wonder about what had happened at the witch burial ground.

Yes, Bonnie had gotten what they needed despite Emily but for a moment there, it had seemed like she was being coerced or given an ultimatum and Stefan knew from experience that witches could be exacting and devious. Often their apparent generosity was a means to forward their own agendas.  What seemed innocuous now could have a devastating price down the road.

Stefan trotted a couple of steps to catch up to the little witch and snagged her arm before she could burst through the door in her exuberance.

“You’re sure this will work?” he asked her, casting his gaze up to the second story of the house toward the spot where Damon’s bedroom was. He didn’t want to come back with an answer only for it to fall apart later. That would only make Damon hate him more. “There’s no catch or hidden agenda?”

“Of course it will,” Bonnie said. “There’s no agenda, Stefan. That’s why they were arguing. Some of them didn’t want to help but others did. The ones who did won.”

Stefan seemed to consider it for a moment. Bonnie wouldn’t lie to him. Then, knowing it was too much to hope for, he asked. “Did they say anything about the silver thread?”

Bonnie shook her head in apology. “No. It was hard enough getting what I got. The one’s who were against it were trying to make the others be quiet,” she said hastily.

Stefan wondered for a moment at the way she answered so quickly but dismissed it. He nodded acceptingly. He hadn’t expected to have gotten that lucky but he’d had to ask. What Damon didn’t know couldn’t hurt him and Stefan wouldn’t say anything unless he knew what he was saying it about. Some things you never got answers to, no matter how much you wanted them. If there was ever an answer to give Bonnie would let them know.

Stefan smiled at her letting himself actually enjoy the fact that they had a way out of this. “Let’s go tell Damon and Elena.”

Bonnie beamed at him again and Stefan stepped ahead of her to open the door for her. He never saw the flash of guilt that flickered across Bonnie’s face behind him.

 

***

 

They burst through the door anxious to relay their good news.

“Damon!” Stefan called.

“Elena!” Bonnie called.

They received no answer but Bonnie was undeterred and rocketed up the stairs. Stefan couldn’t help but be caught up in the little witch’s enthusiasm and raced after her.  They barreled into Damon’s room and in the moment before Bonnie could shout the good news Stefan took in the scene before him and it pulled the breathe right out of his chest.

Damon was sitting up on his bed, Claire pulled into his lap with the fingers of one hand twined in her hair, his head resting against the headboard of the bed and his eyes shut in slumber.  Next to them was Elena in a similar pose, her legs curled beside her and her hair falling over one eye as she slept in the awkward position, one hand on Claire’s arm comfortingly and Damon’s free hand over it.

They must have finally fallen asleep while keeping their vigil over Claire. A spark of jealousy flared in Stefan’s chest seeing Damon’s hand over Elena’s but it fled just as quickly. Their faces were serene and though he’d never have used the word describe his brother, utterly innocent. Looking for all the world like a Renaissance painting. A youth and two maidens, who for just a moment looked so alike they could have been sisters, frozen in a timeless pose of tranquility.

Then Bonnie broke the illusion, breaking Stefan’s enthrallment and making him start.

“We found a way!”

Damon snapped awake with a jerk and Elena awoke so abruptly she nearly toppled off the bed with an indignant yip of surprise.

“Did you just say..,” Damon began to ask.

“We found a way!” Bonnie squeaked happily.

“You did?” Elena gasped. She was trying to clumsily disentangle her limbs from the sheets but Damon gently moved Claire’s head from his lap and settled it on a pillow, his face intense but unreadable.  He headed straight for Bonnie with a purposeful stride and before anyone knew what he intended to do he had grabbed Bonnie and pulled her into a fierce hug.

“I could actually kiss you right now,” Damon said.

“Please don’t,” Bonnie said fearfully.

Stefan didn’t laugh, he rarely laughed but he did grin, he couldn’t help it. And he couldn’t help the pang of disappointment that Damon disregarded his presence nor offered a word of thanks for his help. But Stefan could handle it. It was enough that they’d found their answer and sometimes enough was all you needed.

 

***

The following morning, the third day of Claire’s coma, found everyone crowded into Damon’s bedroom. Damon had wanted to do the ritual immediately but much to his displeasure Bonnie had been in desperate need of some sleep and the amount of power needed for the spell was enough that he’d had to begrudgingly agree.  Now they all stood clustered around Bonnie anxiously as she made ready.

“Okay,” Bonnie said looking at the side table they’d reserved as their preparation area. There was a pocketknife, a box of matches and a mug on it. Five candles had been placed around the room with Damon’s bed, where Claire lay look frail, as the focal point. Who needed silver daggers and gold chalices. So much for magic being arcane.  “Now all we need is some blood from me, Damon, Claire and Elena and we’re ready.”

“Why would you need Damon and Elena’s blood?” Stefan asked perplexed.

“Claire’s lost in her own head, drifting. She’s not connected to the real world anymore. She has to be anchored both physically and spiritually for me to pull her mind back. Damon is the one closest to her so he’ll be the spiritual anchor. Elena is a doppelganger, and we all know what a powerful binding agent that makes her, so she’ll act as the physical anchor. Claire is the object of the spell and I’m the force of will behind it all. We each drink a little to bridge us all together and then I…pull,” Bonnie explained lacking a better description for what she was about to do.

“Whoa. This isn’t going to be like The Sun and The Moon Curse is it?” Stefan asked worriedly. Damon had the same expression on his face. “Elena’s not going to be the living out-clause to undo this somewhere down the road is she?”

“No.” Bonnie shook her head vehemently. “Once the spell is done, it’s done. She’s just the tether holding the rest of us down. Without her, Damon and I could be pulled in with Claire.”

“It’s okay Stefan. I want to do this,” Elena assured him. Stefan grimaced. He still wasn’t sure he liked the idea of Elena being a binding agent for anything even if her nature as a doppelganger made her one but it was Elena’s choice.

“I am beginning to feel like a walking blood bank though,” Elena joked to ease the tension as she unwrapped her hand. Might as well inflict injury on the one that was already wounded.  Without giving anyone a chance to argue about her part in the spell she picked up the knife, neatly sliced her palm with a small hiss of pain and made a fist over the mug. No one stopped her, they trusted Bonnie. Elena finished squeezing her blood into the mug and held the knife out to Bonnie.

Bonnie looked at Elena’s hand and furrowed her brow. She had never gotten the explanation for her injuries Elena had promised her.

 “This spell will bring Claire back to reality but I can’t vouch for what her state of mind will be,” Bonnie said cautiously as she took the knife and followed Elena’s example.

“You don’t know if she’s going to wake up crazy or not?” Damon said sharply. Bonnie shrugged sheepishly.

“It will fix her humanity switch but I’ve never done this before and I didn’t exactly have time to ask the witches if it would undo the insanity she’s already been subjected to. I was lucky I got what I did.”

Damon looked at her incredulously. “Gee Bonnie, first Elena’s blood and then Claire’s possible permanent case of crazy. Is there anything else you failed to mention?”

“Look,” Elena said quickly, seeing the possibility of an impending fight. Damon was already on edge and desperate she didn’t want a ‘maybe’ to send him over it. “If she is, we’ll deal with.”

Damon glanced at her and then his brother. Stefan knew what he was thinking. It wasn’t that simple as optimistic as Elena was.

If Claire came out of her current state insane, there was a high possibility that she’d be incredibly dangerous and uncontrollable. They might be forced to kill her for the safety of everyone around her. The same way Damon had to kill Rose when she’d been bitten by a werewolf. Emily Bennett’s haughty suggestion might end up a reality.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Bonnie promised weakly.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Damon snipped taking the mug and the knife from her.

He turned on his heel and went to the bed, kneeling next to it. With a deft hand, he made a cut in Claire’s palm to match Bonnie’s and Elena’s and let the blood flow into the mug. She never responded to the wound, lifeless as a doll but for the shallow rise and fall of her chest to tell them she was still with alive. The wound healed as if it had never been. Then he did the same thing to himself, quickly adding his blood to the mix before the cut closed. Bonnie came to join him and Elena followed dutifully.

“That all?” he asked, replacing Claire’s arm back on the bed.

“Yep,” Bonnie said. “Now we start.” She looked over at Stefan. “Could you light the candles for me?”

“Sure,” Stefan said politely, moving to do as she bid though he suspected Bonnie hadn’t simply lit them herself because it gave Stefan something to do other than stand there like a bump on a log while everyone else took part in the ritual. 

“Claire first,” Bonnie said nodding toward the mug, indicating that Damon should give her some of the blood first. Damon did as he was told, lifting Claire’s head carefully and tilting the mug to her lips. The blood flowed into her mouth and Damon waited a moment while it trickled down her throat. 

“Mind,” Bonnie said as he did it. As soon as he was done she plucked the mug from his hand and passed it to Elena. Who took a deep breath before gulping down a swallow. Blood might be ambrosia to a vampire but it just tasted nasty to a human. The only perk being that the bite wounds and the slash on her hand and wrist healed instantly upon consuming it since it contained vampire blood.

“Body,” Bonnie said as Elena drank. Bonnie took the mug from her and passed it to Damon who had no such aversion to the mug of comingled blood.

“Soul,” Bonnie said as he swallowed. Damon passed her the mug back and Bonnie drank, grimacing as she did so.

“Will,” she said and then made a disgusted face as she set the empty mug down on the table. The cut on her palm had healed as well. “That tastes so gross.”

“Matter of opinion,” Damon teased darkly.

“Done,” Stefan said returning to the group. The candles glowed softly making the atmosphere of the sun-shaded room almost seem mystical.

“Now what?” Elena asked. Bonnie was already scooting onto the bed, to sit cross-legged at Claire’s feet. She held her hand out for Elena’s.

“Now we all hold hands,” Bonnie said.

“And sing Kumbaya?” Damon snarked as he went around the other side of the bed to join them. Elena gave him a beleaguered look as she clambered onto the bed and took Bonnie’s hand but she didn’t admonish him. She knew it was his way of blowing off some of the steam and apprehension he felt. She knew how serious this was to him. At least he was no longer insisting he didn’t care in the first place anymore. She took Claire’s hand in her own and felt herself clutching it tighter than she had to because it was so limp and unresponsive as though, if she didn’t, she’d lose her hold on her.

Damon eased onto the bed and took Bonnie’s hand then, in a display that denounced all his joking and making light, he took Claire’s, winding his fingers with hers. That small action said everything.

Stefan stepped quietly to the side of the bed. He didn’t want to be in the way but he wanted, no needed, to be close. Even if his brother blamed him for what had happened and believed he’d willfully tried to trade Claire’s life for Elena’s Stefan knew the truth. He cared whether Claire lived or died not just for Damon’s sake but for her own. For all her character flaws, he liked her. There was someone capable of immeasurably deep love under the flippant exterior and her devotion to Damon and Elena still left him stunned. And he owed her a debt he could never repay.

“Whatever happens. Don’t let go.” Bonnie took a steadying breath. “Here we go,” she said shutting her eyes. There was a moment of silence while Bonnie collected herself and then she began chanting in low tone, the words forming a litany.

“De tie kaj denove alportu la ni nomas hejmo.”

The candles flared high. Time seemed to freeze around them. Whether from the spell or simply their anxiousness no one knew.

“De tie kaj denove alportu la ni nomas hejmo.”

Pressure built in the room and a cold breeze began to circulate from nowhere. Bonnie’s voice became strained.

“De tie kaj denove alportu la ni nomas hejmo.”

The breeze rose to a strong wind, sending everyone’s hair whipping around their heads. Stefan saw Damon lean slightly forward toward Claire, his eyes bright and fervent. “Come back to me,” he begged. It was a heartbreakingly desperate plea. Elena was biting her lip with trepidation and Stefan had to will himself not to chew his fingernails like a worried teenager.

“De tie kaj denove alportu la ni nomas hejmo.”

Bonnie was yelling the words to the spell now, the veins on her neck standing out with effort. The wind in the room turned back on itself sending the candles guttering dangerously but for Bonnie’s draw on the power they gave her. Stefan felt the hair on his arms rise and saw Elena glance sharply at her own then at Bonnie and back at Claire. Damon seemed heedless of the palapable energy, all he could focus on was Claire. “Come back to me.”

“De tie kaj denove alportu la ni nomas hejmo! Ligu ŝia koro! Pasxtu ŝia dubo! Ĉeno ŝia animo!”

The last recitation of the chant sounded like a demand. As if Bonnie were actually forcing it to do as she willed rather than asking. The wind died instantly. The candles still burned.

“It’s done,” Bonnie said her voice rough.

Claire hadn’t moved.

Damon released his hold on Bonnie in favor of leaning over Claire anxiously but Elena still held onto the witch’s hand tightly.

“Claire?” Damon called to the prone woman. Nothing happened.

Stefan felt a moment of utter panic. If the spell was over, why wasn’t Claire awake? She was still as ever, in fact Stefan couldn’t hear her breathing anymore.

“Nothing’s happening. Why isn’t anything happening?” Damon demanded to know..

“Bonnie?” Elena asked, her voice thin and frantic.

“Give it a minute,” Bonnie soothed but Stefan could hear the doubt in her voice. She wasn’t sure it had worked.

“Come on, Claire,” Stefan murmured.

Long seconds ticked by, the air leaden with worry. Bonnie was beginning to swallow nervously. Elena was holding her breath and Damon looked as frantically desperate as Stefan had ever seen him.

Just as Stefan feared Damon was going to come undone and go into a rage of grief Stefan felt a tide of joy and love burst over him so strong he almost cried out in jubilation. The others felt it too. Elena was so wide eyed the whites showed all the way around and she started laughing. Bonnie was grinning so hard it must have hurt and nearly in tears. Damon looked like someone had just given him the key to heaven. Just as quickly as the burst of overwhelming emotion came it went. Shut off like a light switch. It almost hurt to lose it, it was so powerful.

Claire gasped raggedly and sat straight up, her eyes darting around wildly as she pulled in one gulp of air after another.

“Claire!” Damon breathed catching her face in his hands, running them through her hair.  She looked around in complete confusion.

“Damon?” she asked.

“How do you feel?’ Damon asked immediately.

“I feel fine,” Claire said not understanding why he seemed so desperate. Damon’s shoulders sagged with relief. He crushed her to his chest in a fierce hug.

“Damon, I can’t breathe,” Claire gurgled.

“I don’t care,” Damon told her hugging her tighter.

Stefan felt Elena seize him around the waist and looked down. She was crying with joy, Bonnie clutched to her sobbing and smiling. Even Stefan couldn’t fight the tears in his eyes or the ripple of happy laughter that pulled itself from his throat. For one moment, overwrought joy ruled the Salvatore Mansion and there wasn’t one of them that didn’t welcome it with open arms.

“Wait. How’d I get here? What happened?” Claire asked still utterly confused. “I’m starving!”

None of them answered her, they were too busy laughing and crying. Whether it was the effects of the spell or simply true happiness, none of them cared.

“Would someone answer me!”


	15. Chapter 15

Claire was standing in front of the fireplace, gazing into the flames contemplatively while she sipped a cup of coffee. Whatever had caused the burst of happiness had faded with the coming of early afternoon and left a kind of suffuse lazy warmth. Though it was April, it felt like a fine summer day despite the faint chill in the air. Elena had been so tired afterward she’d gone to bed for the first real sleep she’d had in three days.  Bonnie had wandered off somewhere but if Stefan listened, he could hear the faint beating of her heart upstairs. Damon was in his bedroom. Stefan could hear him rifling through drawers and shopping bags for the sweater jacket Claire had idly mentioned fetching herself only a few minutes ago. Stefan thought she’d asked for it simply to gain a moment to herself. Damon wouldn’t let her out of his sight.

“How are you feeling?” Stefan asked cautiously as he came up behind her. He hoped it wasn’t too soon but with the crisis abated he needed to ask Claire about Vincent’s journals. If she would check them for anything about Klaus that might help protect Elena. Claire glanced over at him briefly and sighed heavily before returning her attention to the flames.

“I’m fine,” she said. “If someone asks me that one more time I swear I’m going to scream.”

Stefan couldn’t help but give her a wry grin. Damon had been quizzing her constantly about it. He supposed she would be sick of being asked. But despite Damon’s concern that she was going to reveal that she was insane any moment she seemed to have suffered no ill effects. She had fed and looked as healthy as ever.  And there was a stillness about her now that hadn’t been there before.  Surprisingly Damon hadn’t lit into her yet for attempting to get herself killed to save them all or insane ploy she’d pulled with her humanity switch. Stefan supposed he was still too relieved she was alive at all to say anything. Yet.

“So you really don’t remember anything?” Stefan asked.

Claire shook her head, her black hair cascading down her back with the motion and for the briefest moment Stefan was struck by a memory of Katherine, her back to him as she shook out her tumble of curls as she prepared to take to his bed.

“No. Nothing. The last thing I remember I was in the field outside the Meeting House while it burned and the next I was here.”

“You were in a coma, for lack of a better word, for three days,” Stefan said.

“So Damon said.”

“You seem calmer somehow,” Stefan noted.

“I wouldn’t say calmer. Just focused,” Claire said. Her voice was soft and lyrical, confident now instead of biting, and brittle.  She didn’t elaborate on what she meant so Stefan left it alone choosing instead to playfully rib her.

“You mean I don’t have to worry about you killing the next person who  rubs you the wrong way?”

She chuckled lightly. “For the moment.” Stefan grinned, coming to stand beside her as she watched the fire burn. He wondered what she was thinking. Was she thinking of the Meeting House or those last moments before she’d blacked out? What was going through her mind?

“What will you do now?” he asked.

Alexander was gone for good. Her mentor was dead. Claire had a lot of choices ahead of her on how to move forward. Would she stay in Mystic Falls and build the life with Damon they’d missed out on the past eighty years? Or would she go back to Los Angeles and try to pick up the pieces of her old life? Might she choose to do neither and pick some other destination, far away from her old life. If Stefan had to guess, he thought it would involve Damon no matter what she chose. She was too devoted to him, loved him too much to let him go again.

“The first thing I’m going to do is go back to L.A. and see if Vincent’s Journals have anything in them about Klaus that would help Elena,” Claire said decidedly. Stefan blinked. He’d expected her to say she didn’t know and he certainly hadn’t expected her to answer his question before he’d even said it aloud. She looked at him with sardonic humor. “Isn’t that what you were working up to asking me?”

“Well. Yes,” Stefan stuttered feeling the need to explain himself. Though he noted she avoided calling Los Angeles home. “But I didn’t want to be presumptuous. You’ve been through a lot and…”

“It’s Elena,” Claire said simply. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“Thank you.” Stefan couldn’t think of anything else to say that didn’t make him sound like an idiot. “For all of it,” he added weightily.  He didn’t have to say more, Claire knew what he meant.

“Thank you,” Claire said taking Stefan off guard again.

“For what?’

“You didn’t have to do what you did. I know you tried to go back and I know you braved the wrath of a hundred witches to find a way to undo what happened,” Claire said.

“How did you know?” Stefan asked. It wasn’t a secret but he hadn’t said anything to her about it. Had she somehow heard them while she unconscious? Or had the spell given her knowledge of events out of her purview, some sort of clairvoyant side effect?

“Elena and Bonnie,” Claire said smirking lightly at the surprised look on his face.

“Oh. Right.” Stefan said feeling stupid.

“I made my choice. You had no responsibility to try to save me. You’re not who I thought you were, Stefan. You’re not who I thought you weren’t either but…”

Stefan wondered if his jaw was on the floor yet. Was Claire actually admitting that she didn’t hate him on principal alone? He couldn’t help the grin that spread over his face.

“You’re not saying that you actually like me are you?” he teased.

“I wouldn’t say ‘like’ precisely,” Claire teased back. “More like I find you tolerable.”

Stefan laughed and Claire gave him a crooked grin he’d never seen before. One that spoke of a dry sense of humor and the carefree woman Damon had fallen in love with so long ago.  

“I’ll take what I can get,” Stefan said.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Claire joked. Stefan chuckled.  Claire picked up her coffee cup and looked into it for a moment her face becoming pensive. Stefan tilted his head wondering at the sudden change in temperament. “And don’t let what you are destroy you.”

Stefan looked at her contemplatively for a moment, crossing his arms over his chest in his habitual pose of thought. It didn’t sound like the accusation or scatching remark he would have expected it to be. It sounded like a concerned warning, from one friend to another.

“Alexander being dead doesn’t change it does it?” he said. “You still think you’re a monster.”

She looked up at him then and an entire conversation passed between them unsaid. They understood each other. Whether or not they agreed was another matter but they understood each other and maybe that was enough, for now.

“We are, what we are.”

 

***

 

Damon hoped this was the right one. Claire had said she wanted a light sweater and when Damon had insisted on fetching it himself she’d said it was the one with ruffles. He wasn’t sure that the garment he held was the one she meant but it looked about as ‘ruffley’ as anything else had. With Claire’s penchant for clothing that draped, a description of ruffles didn’t narrow it down very much.

He was in a hurry to get back downstairs. He didn’t want Claire to be alone for long. Even if she was perfectly fine, and Damon was still concerned whatever Bonnie had done would unravel spectacularly, he didn’t want her alone with Stefan. As if he might somehow find a way to destroy their sudden fortune. He was still angry at his brother, still blamed him. He failed to consider that Stefan had tried as hard as any of them to find the answer that had saved Claire. It didn’t change the fact that he’d let her go to her intended death willingly.

As for Claire, Damon couldn’t have been happier. Well there was one thing, the daylight ring, but this was enough. The possibility of losing her had utterly terrified him in a way that he hadn’t felt but for a couple of other times in his long life. It was enough that he had Claire back. He was incredibly lucky to have her at all and he knew it. It was enough that he loved her and she loved him.

The relief he’d felt when she’d opened her eyes still buoyed him. The strange flood of joy, for which Bonnie had no explanation, had dissipated but Damon still felt its echo. Though the odd shared empathy had gone with Claire’s awakening. He supposed it was some strange effect of what had been wrong with Claire. With her alright, it hardly mattered what had caused it. His relief and joy were part of the reason Damon hadn’t yet harangued Claire for what she had done. But it was coming. He was immeasurably angry with her for the dirty trick she’d pulled to save them all.

Then again he knew that if she hadn’t, they’d probably all be dead. Elena would be dead or turned and made Alexander’s plaything in Claire’s place. Was he wrong for being angry with Claire for that? She’d been willing to die to save him, his brother and Elena. He could hardly believe he finally had what he’d waited a century and half to find. Someone who loved him as completely as he’d loved Katherine and with just as fierce a devotion. It was more than he’d ever expected to find. It was more than enough even if he didn’t deserve it. How was it that it was him who Claire had chosen to love?

The sound of footsteps shook Damon from his thoughts as Bonnie hurried to catch up with him. She stopped beside him on the stairs her hand held out and something clutched in her closed fist. Her eyes were bright and cheerful but the shadows under her eyes proved how much the spell to save Claire had taken out of her despite the power she wielded. He didn’t understand why she hadn’t gone home by now but Bonnie could do what she wanted. It wasn’t as if he could stop her.

“Here,” Bonnie said.

Damon furrowed his brow for a moment in confusion but then Bonnie’s hand opened. The ring box containing the ring Damon had begged her to spell sat on her open palm. Damon took a deep breath. He would not get angry. He would keep his calm. He owed Bonnie for saving Claire, he couldn’t snap her slim neck because she had a prejudice where vampires and particularly Damon were concerned. 

He didn’t realize he was standing there doing nothing until Bonnie reached forward, took the hand that wasn’t holding Claire’s sweater and pressed the ring box into it. Damon looked at it sadly. It was as if Bonnie couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.

“It works now,” Bonnie said.

Damon did a double take, his mouth hanging in shock. Bonnie smiled at him and hopped down the stairs. “Don’t say I never did anything for you,” she called back over her shoulder. Damon could only watch her as she trotted off throwing him a deeply amused grin. Hell must have frozen over.

After he’d taken a moment to make his brain start working again he smiled at the small velvet covered box is hand closing over it possessively. Everything he could wish for was coming true, one by one. It was almost too much to be believed and Damon feared he’d wake up and discover it was all a dream. If it was he hoped he dreamed forever.

Damon tucked the ring box in his pocket and hopped down the stairs trying to think of the perfect way to give it to Claire. He found her standing in front of the fire talking to Stefan, her mouth was open as if to say something to Bonnie who had joined them and the welter of anger Damon felt for his brother bubbled to the surface again unbidden.

“Plotting some way to get Claire killed again brother?” he snipped snidely.

Stefan turned a guilty but annoyed expression of him. Bonnie frowned deeply and gave him a scathing look. “Damon!” she rebuked. Claire looked skyward and rolled her eyes.

“If you’re going to be mad then take it out on me. Not Stefan or anyone else,” Claire said beleaguered. Stefan and Bonnie looked at her in surprise. 

“Why not?” Damon shot back his anger rising and turning on Claire. Claire crossed her arms and turned toward him shaking her head.

“Your brother didn’t have a chance against me,” she said with what Damon swore was pride. “I didn’t give him a choice. I used his own moral high ground against him to get what I want. So if you’re going to be mad at someone, be mad at me. I’m the one who tricked both you so no one would get killed.”

“Except you,” Damon spat, closing the distance between them his brother and Bonnie forgotten in favor of giving Claire the deriding he’d been putting off. Stefan was easing away from them, pulling Bonnie with him.

“I’m just gonna go take Bonnie home,” he muttered and all but fled the room, with Bonnie in tow. Damon hardly noticed.

“What were you thinking?” he demanded angrily.

“Look, I’m sorry that I had to cut you out of the plan,” Claire excused.

“There shouldn’t have been a plan! You almost got yourself killed!” Damon insisted sharply, frantically, because her ‘plan’ had scared him witless.

“Do you think I wanted to go behind your back?” Claire shot back becoming angry at his stubbornness and his refusal to accept the choice she’d made.  “I didn’t. But if I hadn’t asked for Stefan’s help then you would have tried to be the hero and you’d be dead.”

Damon scowled at her. “Sorry for trying to keep you alive!”

Claire scoffed. “Now you’re mad at me for doing the same thing you were going to do? Have done?”

Damon glared at her furiously. She had him there and she knew it. He had been going to do the same thing to keep her safe. She’d just beaten him to the punch.

“I couldn’t let you die,” Claire said heartfelt. “You don’t have a monopoly on protecting the people you care about.”

Damon continued to glare at her but his heart clenched in his chest for a beat. Wasn’t that the crux of it all? They’d both done what they had done because they loved each other. Cared about Elena and though he was never going to let Stefan find out, cared about his brother.

“I’m still pissed at you,” Damon said petulantly but his expression softened. Claire sighed.

“Damon…”

“Just…,” Damon said. “I just have to say this once and you need to hear it.” She looked back at him expecting him to start complaining again but Claire’s stalwart refusal to apologize for what she’d done made Damon burn with the need to tell her everything he’d never said, couldn’t say before.

“Yes. I’m angry. No. I’m not okay that you tried to get yourself killed and nearly went insane to save everybody,” he said. Claire stood there listening, letting him go on his tirade. But what he said next made her stop and stare.

“Because I would rather have died in that fire with you…I would rather die right now, than go on living in this world knowing you weren’t in it.” Damon was gesturing violently as he spoke. “I’d rather die right now than spend eternity remembering how good I had it and how happy I was with you only I was too stupid to see it. I wanted to apologize but then I realized…I’m not sorry,” Damon confessed. Claire looked back at him, her face a display of breathless shock.

“I’m not sorry I met you. I’m not sorry that in death you’re the one that made me feel most alive. I’m not sorry that knowing you made me ‘me’ again,” Damon said unrepentant. Claire’s eyes were wide and her jaw had dropped open.

“I don’t deserve you. I’m not the good guy, remember? But you know what I really am? Selfish,” he confessed. “I take what I want. I do what I want. I love the wrong girl when the one I should have picked was standing right in front of me. Twice. I make decisions that hurt you. I don’t do the right thing. And there is no apology in the world that encompasses all the reasons I’m wrong for you. But most of all…I’m not sorry I am madly, deeply, irreversibly in love with you.”

Damon ran out of air and words. He’d said it, all of it. Claire stood there blinking at him for a moment then her face became incredulous. Damon felt his heart drop to his feet. She was going to rebuke him. It was too late to make up for all the mistakes he’d made. He looked away unable to bare to look at her while she told him that it wasn’t enough.

“You’re selfish?” she said. Damon’s eyebrows rose. That wasn’t he’d been expecting her to say.  Then the world fell in reverse.

“I make choices that piss you off. And I don’t care,’ Claire said vehemently unapologetic. “I trick you. I manipulate you and your brother for my own ends. I do whatever it takes to get what I want. And I don’t care if you’re okay with it. I’d do it again.”

It was Damon’s turn to stand there speechless.

“Because I’d rather die knowing you were mad at me but that I gave you everything you ever wanted that I couldn’t give you. And you can be angry but I’m not sorry either,” she said pacing forward one slow step at a time as if she meant to pummel him with words instead of blows.

“I’m not sorry that I would rather die and let Elena have you than deprive you of the love you’ve always wanted because I thought mine wasn’t enough. I’m not sorry that I’d rather walk away this instant than think for even a second that you weren’t happy. I’m not sorry that, that’s alright with me,” she railed.

Damon wanted to say something, do something. He wanted to grab her and shake her senseless and he wanted to take her in his arms and never let go at the same time but he was rooted to the spot. All he could do was stand there and gape.

“I’m not sorry that I will always choose you. I’m not sorry that given the choice, I’d have become a vampire to be with you and never seen so much as a single sunbeam again rather than be a human who only gets to spend a handful of years with you. Only to lose you when I’m too old, sick and miserable and you’re still you. Because one lifetime with you isn’t enough. And I am not sorry that of all the people I have ever known that you are the only one I have ever loved so completely that nothing else matters.”

She sighed and turned to walk away as if she expected him to get angry with her again.

Damon let out a whimper of ecstatic joy and grabbed her, whirling her around. He pulled her to him, her head in his hands and captured her mouth with his own in a kiss that was filled with all the unbridled passion and fire he’d kept pent up all this time and she returned it just as ardently. There weren’t words enough in creation to describe that moment. Let the world crumble around them as long as this moment lasted forever. It was everything.

 

***

 

 “Sorry about the sudden exit but I didn’t know if those two were going to kiss or kill each other,” Stefan apologized as he walked Bonnie to his car.

She favored him with a smile. “It’s okay,” she said as they walked more sedately than they’d left the house. Stefan shrugged.

“If it’s any consolation I think Claire was about to thank you for what you did. You know, before Damon interrupted by being Damon.”

“I know,” she said softly as Stefan started to open the car door for her. “I just want to go home, get in my bed with a big mug of hot chocolate, watch a trashy soap and sleep until next week.”

“You’ve earned it,” Stefan told her as she slipped into the car. He paused in shutting the door, propping his arms at it. “I know you said that Claire is going to be fine but I need to hear it one more time. There is no chance that she’s going to flip her lid somewhere down the line right? Because I do not want to think about what Damon might do if she did.”

“She’s fine, Stefan. I promise. When I finished the spell I felt it, whatever she did to herself when she played yo-yo with her humanity switch is fixed,” Bonnie assured him.

“But you don’t know where that rush of happy came from?” Stefan asked. “And why’d I feel it? I wasn’t a part of the spell.”

Bonnie looked at the knees of her jeans nervously and shrugged one shoulder. “If I had to guess I’d say it was from Claire. For a moment between when I pulled her back and she woke up there were no constraints on what she could do and her mind was all over the place as it righted itself, she had no control over it. Think of it as this shock wave of untempered compulsion only it wasn’t conscious. She was projecting the last thing she felt before she fell into the coma.”

“The last thing she felt was joy?” Stefan mused aloud in mild disbelief. He didn’t think if he had just been vervained, staked and burned he’d have been joyful.

“And love,” Bonnie added. Stefan waggled his brows dubiously. He supposed it sort of made sense. She’d done what she set out to do. He could die happy if he knew it would save those he loved. That made sense…sort of. “But if it was some sort of short lived burst of projective compulsion it still doesn’t make sense that I felt it. Can’t compel another vampire, well unless you’re an Original”

“Like I said there were no limits for that one second maybe if nature didn’t ensure a balance to everything all vampires would be able to compel anyone,” Bonnie mused weakly. Stefan canted his head. Anything was possible he guessed.

“I don’t suppose you got any clues to the whole ‘ghostly silver string’ thing while you were doing it?”

“It’s gone,” Bonnie said. “When the spell finished it just sort of…disappeared. Another weird side effect of what was wrong with her? I don’t know.” Bonnie shrugged helplessly but she said it very quietly. As if she didn’t want to admit she didn’t know or that she did know and wasn’t telling him. Stefan’s brow furrowed.

“Bonnie. Is there something you’re not telling me?” Bonnie looked up at him sharply. “Did the witches…”

“No. I swear.  I honestly don’t know why it disappeared like that.”

“Ok,” Stefan relented. “Let’s get you home.” He shut the car door and went around to the driver side, his forehead lined with thought. Bonnie swore she didn’t know why the silver thread had disappeared. She’d never said she didn’t know what it was or that the witches weren’t involved somehow.

 

***

 

Damon woke slowly and savored a long languid stretch. He and Claire had spent the rest of the day and nearly all of the night tangled up in each other and he was feeling particularly satisfied and content. There was only one thing left to do to make the day perfect. Damon couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a perfect day. Before he’d been turned?

Claire had slipped out of his bed a while ago and he’d let her, pretending her careful attempt not to disturb him had worked. He’d heard her sneak downstairs and go outside. Now, with only thirty minutes to sunrise he knew where to find her and why.

Damon rolled out of bed and threw his clothes back on smiling as he checked to be sure the small box was still in his pocket then he went to find Claire.

He found her sitting on the low brick wall that made up the front of the portico at the front of the boarding house looking out into the distance quietly.

“You know the moon set hours ago,” Damon noted as he went to join her. She looked back at him but said nothing as he sat down beside her on the wall. “Sunrise is coming soon,” he said putting an arm around her.

“I know,” she said softly. “I’ll be in a few minutes.”

Damon reached across her to the arm he had around her waist and opened the box, moving it so she could see it. “I was actually wondering if you wanted to watch it with me.”

Claire looked down at it quizzically. She looked from the ring to him, her face flitting through cautious hope and disbelief. “Is that a…”

“I always told you I’d give you back the sun,” Damon said taking the ring out of the box and slipping it onto her left middle finger, in the same place he wore his own. Tears sprang to her eyes and Claire gave a strangled cry. She seized him, crawling into his lap and kissed him breathless.

“Easy with the merchandise honey,” he teased when she finally let him get a breath. Then he nodded toward the horizon. “Look”

She turned in his embrace and for an instant she stiffened as she saw the first rays of sunlight strike through the trees. Instinctively fearful of them. Damon tightened his embrace soothingly and rested his chin on her shoulder. Claire relaxed and shut her eyes, tilting her face to the warmth of a sun she hadn’t felt in a century, tears streaming down her face as light slowly crept over them. She trembled and shook then a sound Damon hadn’t heard in so long he’d forgotten it, sounded. Damon grinned from ear to ear, his own eyes bright with moisture. Claire was laughing.

They stayed that way for hours, wrapped in each other’s arms as Claire soaked in the sun like a flower in spring and Damon enjoyed it with her. Finally close to noon he extricated himself from their place on the wall. “Why don’t you stay here and enjoy the sun and I’ll go get us lunch,” he said. “I’d say it’s a perfect day for a picnic. Wouldn’t you?”

Claire beamed at him so brightly then that it out the sun she so loved to shame. “I would.” Damon grinned and went inside, leaving the door slightly ajar as he headed for the kitchen and passing Elena as he went.

“Good afternoon, Elena,” he piped jovially. Elena was too busy looking from him out the front door to Claire in shock to answer. Damon chuckled at her already thinking of what they had in the refrigerator that would keep for the picnic. Two perfect days in a row? It was almost too good to be true.

 

***

Claire turned her face back to the sun as Damon went inside and savored its warmth. She could touch the sun. Damon loved her and her love was enough for him. Alexander was dead. She was finally enough for some one. She smiled to herself and sighed contentedly. It was perfect. She held on to that with everything she had in her.

“Hey,” Elena said straddling the wall, looking at her as if she expected her to combust any second. “How are you…” Claire raised her hand so Elena could see her new daylight ring. Elena grabbed her hand to get a closer look.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed. She glanced back the way Damon had gone. “He must have had Bonnie make it. I had no idea. I was so tired I just crashed and burned after the spell. I’m so happy for you,” she beamed and hugged Claire exuberantly.

“Thanks,” Claire said softly smiling at her, tilting her hand back and forth so that the sun glinted off it.

“How are you feeling?” she asked with concern.

“Couldn’t be better,” Claire answered honestly, as far as it went. She was as hale and hardy as ever and she was happy, genuinely happy, for the first time in ages. Then she looked at Elena perplexed.

“The crisis was averted, all is well in Mystic Falls,” she said. “Kind of.” She hadn’t forgotten about the threat that was Klaus or the danger it represented to Elena. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

Elena snorted incredulously. “You’re advocating for me to go to school? You?”

Claire laughed and half nodded. “Okay, so I’m not exactly a role model. But you have to admit. I am fun.”

Elena chuckled at her joke then said, “Besides, what’s one more day? I’m so far behind I’m never going to catch up anyway.”

“I could take care of that for you,” Claire said only half-kidding. The sun felt so good, it enveloped her like a fuzzy warm blanket.  Everything looked different in the daylight. It was beautiful.

“Thanks but I’ll make it or not on my own merits.”

“Your call,” Claire said with a light shrug.

“And it wouldn’t work on my history teacher,” Elena said. Claire looked at her confused.

“He kind of knows about vampires. He’s the vampire hunter Damon mentioned.”

“The best friend vampire hunter?”

Elena nodded.

“And he’s your history teacher?”

“His name’s Ric. You’ll like him. He’s a great guy. I’ll introduce you to him sometime,” Elena said.

Claire shook her head incredulously. “Vampire hunting history teacher who’s best friends with a vampire. Now there’s one I’ve never heard. Talk about a conflict of interests.” The headshake hid the way she didn’t answer Elena’s comment.

“Thank you,” Elena said suddenly not noticing the subtle evasion.  “You almost died to save me, to save all of us.”

“You’re welcome,” Claire said simply and fidgeted with the hem of her sage sweater uncomfortably. She didn’t want to be thanked.

 Elena shook her head as she pushed her long thick hair behind her ears heedless of Claire’s reaction. “Damon was beside himself. I don’t know what he would have done if you had died. I’ve never seen him so upset. He loves you so much.”

Claire felt her heart stutter in her chest. It was wonderful to hear those words, to know they were true but it also made this so much harder.

 “There is good in you after all,” Elena said resolutely a slightly smug but playful smile on her lips.

“Maybe,” Claire assented half-heartedly, quickly dismissing Elena’s subtle insistence that she was good despite what she thought. “Could you tell Bonnie thank you for me? I was going to but Damon came in being Damon and things got a little complicated.”

“You can do it yourself later. She won’t mind that it was a little belated. She’s my best friend and I am more or less living here now. You’ll see her around,” Elena said innocently waving back toward the house.

“I just meant, if you see her before I do,” Claire said idly.

Elena nodded. “I will.”

There was a long moment of awkward silence before Elena broke it. “You’d really have done it? Become a vampire to be with Damon even though you hate it?”

“In a heartbeat. Wouldn’t you do the same thing to be with Stefan? It’s had to cross your mind.”

Elena shook her head again. “No. I love Stefan but I’d never want to be a vampire. Everything he’s been through, Damon’s been through, you’ve been through. I don’t want that life.”

Claire nodded relieved. “Good.” Elena pulled her legs up sitting precariously on the wall in a cross-legged position that Claire wasn’t even sure she could manage with her enhanced balance and agility.

“I know there’s not, but if there was a way for you to become human again would you do it?” Elena countered.  Claire looked up to the sky, watching the fluffy white clouds drift by, fingering the tiny lump in her pants pocket thoughtfully.

“No. Whatever I was before, this is who I am now. I was prey. I couldn’t go back to that,” Claire admitted. Elena frowned deeply not understanding. She couldn’t possibly. Claire took a deep breath and changed the subject, though the topic wasn’t any easier than the previous one.

“He loves you.”

“Stefan?” Elena said abruptly growing nervous as Claire treaded over ground she felt best left alone.

“Damon.”

Elena shook her head. “He loves you. Whatever he felt for me doesn’t matter anymore. He has you.”

Claire smiled at her bitter sweetly. “You love him too.”

“What? No. Is this about Alexander compelling me?” Elena sputtered.

“You can’t lie under compulsion, Elena.”

“I didn’t say I love Damon!” Elena insisted.

“Then what did you say?” Claire asked knowing that however she had phrased it the meaning would be the same.  

“That I didn’t know what I felt. Damon got under my skin and I can’t shake him. But what I feel for him, it’s not the same as what I feel for Stefan.”

Claire chuckled dryly, impressed by the neat little side step Elena had done around naming what she felt for Damon even to herself. Denial springs eternal. If Elena wasn’t so guileless she’d have been as good at deception as her doppelganger. Or Claire for that matter.

“Damon is good at that.”

“He loves you, Claire,” Elena said again.

“I know and I love him. When I’m near him he consumes me in a way I can’t explain,” Claire said. She found that darkly humorous.. She’d finally found the love that consumed her, the passion, adventure and danger she’d so fervently and naively sought after when she was human after she was already dead. She’d just had to become a vampire at the hands of a madman provoked by a cold hearted bitch to do it. The irony.

 “But I don’t deserve him. I’m nothing but a tool that was used to hurt him. Me and Damon, we’re like fire and gasoline. When we’re together we fuel each other. I can be what I am with him without being judged but that doesn’t change it. I’m monster, I accept that and I’m not going to change. You did what I can never do,” Claire said sadly.

She’d thought long and hard about this over the last day and she’d let her final decision be contingent on the answers Elena gave her. “You gave him his humanity back. I can’t do that for him. No matter how much I want to. And he needs that. And one of these days you’re going to need him. Just because he loves me and that’s enough for him, doesn’t mean he stops loving you. It doesn’t work that way.”

“What are you talking about?’ Elena said confused.

“I’m afraid that eventually Stefan’s denial of what he is, is going to come back to haunt him and when it does it will shatter every illusion you have about what we are. I wish it weren’t true, God do I, but it is. You’re too damn good for all of us and I hate that your innocent belief in our innate goodness despite the fact we’re all a bunch of murderous vampires is going to be the very thing that breaks you. But it will and sooner or later, you’re going to realize that the feelings you have for Damon are more than not being able to shake him,” Claire said.

“What are you saying Claire?” Elena asked, starting to become defensive and a little angry.

“That’s why you can’t remember any of this,” Claire went on ignoring Elena’s question. She turned and belatedly Elena realized what she intended to do. Her eyes went wide and her hand flew to her throat for the vervain necklace she always wore only to abruptly remember she’d lost it in the fire.

“Claire. No,” Elena said trying to scramble up and run, to scream before Claire could do anything but she’d made the mistake of looking Claire in the eye when she’d panicked.

“Sh,” Claire soothed exerting her power over her, placing a hand on Elena’s shoulder and gently making her sit back down on the wall, her voice shaking. Her nose burned with tears that went unshed. She had to do this now or she might never get the chance again. Elena had gone still and blank.  “I don’t deserve Damon but you do. You’re good and compassionate. Everything that I can never be. He loves you and he needs you more than he needs a monster like me. No matter how I feel, I will always choose Damon. And it’s because I love him that I can’t be selfish with him. And why you can’t remember this. Now, you got distracted for a moment. Nothing happened. Forget.”

Claire wished she dared to compel Elena to never risk her life again the way she had meant to before. But that would be too obvious. Stefan and Damon would know something was up. And funnily enough, she couldn’t bear the thought that if Elena ever knew she’d hate her for it. Elena would be safe. She had Stefan and Damon here to protect her and at a distance, Claire.  

 Elena blinked and shook her head. “I’m sorry. What was I saying? I totally spaced there for a minute,” she said as if no time had passed.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s been a long week,” Claire said, her face carefully schooled.

“That it has,” Elena agreed. There were footsteps behind them and they both turned.

“Ready?” Damon asked Claire, the basket in the crook of his arm

Claire took a deep breath and gave him a bright smile. “As I’ll ever be,” she said getting to her feet.  She clasped her hands behind her back and gave him a coy look. “Race you?”

“You don’t know where we’re going,” Damon noted. “And I’m older and faster.”

“Maybe I’ll cheat,” Claire teased, dancing away from him a few paces. Selfish as it was, she wanted one day with him in the sun. She was going to have it, it was the last thing she’d have to see her through.

“Is that right?” Damon said impishly advancing on her slowly, ready to spring if she bolted. He knew this lover’s game.

“Oh!” Elena said suddenly. “I almost forgot. Are you two going to be back by dark?”

“I doubt I could get Claire in a building before then,” Damon joked lightly reaching for Claire’s hand. She danced away.

“Can’t catch me!” Claire declared and dashed off at vampire speed. Damon grinned.

“Don’t bet on that,” Damon said and dashed after her.

“Have fun!” Elena called out though they were already out of sight. But she heard peels of girlish laughter and playful protests echo through the trees.

 

***

“What are you doing!” Claire squealed through a fit of giggles. “Stop it.”

Damon attacked her sensitive sides again with a vengeance as she batted feebly at his hands. “Make me,” he challenged.

Suddenly Claire twisted and pinned him in the golden grass with a triumphant grin. Damon smiled at her reaching up to caress her face. The sunlight shone on her hair, picking out deep reddish highlights like burnished mahogany. She was so beautiful in the daylight, a beam of moonlight that had escaped the night.

They were at the top of the falls that gave the town it’s name, so high up they could see the silhouette of the nearby mountains through the spindly trees that bore the first buds of spring. There were scattered daffodils on the bank of the river that tumbled into the falls and above them birds on wing sang happily.  It couldn’t have been more idyllic.

Damon raised up and kissed Claire sweetly. Then she settled down beside him, her arms wrapped around him and her head on his chest. Damon sighed.

“This is nice,” he said placidly.

“Yes it is,” Claire murmured.

Over her shoulder he could see the remains of their picnic still spread out on the blanket. Empty wine glasses, crumbs of cheese, bare grape vines and apple cores. Beyond the impromptu feast the sky was painted pink and gold over the mountains. Damon could have laid here forever.

“Quiet, still, peaceful. I like our lives like this,” Damon mused sleepily.

“Me too,” Claire said snuggling into him. Damon shifted to accommodate her happily.

“The sun will be down soon,” he noted. “I think Elena is planning some sort of surprise dinner. I saw the china out when I went in the kitchen. Granted it will come out of plastic containers and we’ll all pretend it didn’t. She can’t cook either. But at least I know it won’t poison anyone.”

“That was one time, Damon!” Claire said in mock outrage. Damon laughed.

“Once was enough.”

“Beast,” she playfully insulted him

“Minx,” he shot back.

She laughed and leaned over him, running her fingers through his hair. “I suppose we should be getting back,” she said regretfully.

“Fun’s over,” Damon complained teasingly with a feigned pout.

 

***

Damon and Claire walked back to the boarding house hand in hand, enjoying the last of the day. Damon was busy chattering about the future while Claire quietly let him. Just as she had always been Claire was content to let Damon choose the path they took or the topic they discussed. If he was happy, she was happy. It was like old times, only better.

“You have to meet Caroline. You two will get along famously. She’s as much of a clothes horse as you. She is a bossy little thing though. And perpetually bubbly. Maybe not. You might strangle her on sight,” Damon said.

“And Ric. You’ll like him. He’s a little rough around the edges but he’s okay. Most of the time. Every once in a while he pisses me off and I have to snap his neck but what’s a broken neck between friends?” he went on as they strolled up the driveway.

“And when we defeat Klaus and save Elena, you and I are going to spend a month doing absolutely nothing.  That we don’t want to. Maybe we’ll go to the Bahamas. Lay on the beach and drink piña coladas.”

Damon was so absorbed in his idle chitchat that he almost stumbled over his own feet when Claire’s hold on his hand tightened and she stopped suddenly.

“You love her a lot don’t you?”

Damon winced. He’d known this was coming sooner or later but he’d made his choice. That didn’t stop him from still loving Elena however. He wished it did, hoped that in time he’d fall out of love with her so he didn’t feel guilty for loving two women at the same time but he’d chosen Claire. He would let Elena go.

“I do,” he admitted. “But I choose you, Claire.”

She smiled at him wanly. “Loving me doesn’t stop you from loving her. Love doesn’t work that way, Damon. We both know that.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Damon insisted. “Whatever I feel for Elena, I choose you. I’m letting her go.”

“And you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. You’ll always wonder what might have been,” Claire said releasing his hand to dig in her pocket. She kept whatever it was hidden. She shrugged and chortled raggedly. “I’d be fine with polyamory but that’s not you, or Elena.” She face became very serious. “So love her.”

“Claire,” Damon began to say shaking his head.

“And in sixty or seventy years, when it’s all over, come find me.”

Damon felt a chill creep up his spine. She wasn’t just telling him she didn’t blame him for loving Elena. She was telling him she was leaving.

“That’s the beauty of eternity. We have the time.”

Damon seized her wrists, holding her hands over his heart. “I love you, Claire.”

“I know,” she said her voice strangled, her eyes were glassy. “It’s okay, Damon. You gave me back the sun. No regret will live in me as long as that joy. Save one. And I thank you for that part too.”

Damon pulled her closer, intent on making her believe that he didn’t want what she was offering him. His freedom. He could love Elena for her human life and Claire would still be waiting for him.  But he knew part of him did. Because he did love Elena. He didn’t know if what Claire was telling him made him love her all the more or if it tore him apart.

“No,” Damon said. It was the only word he could get out.

“I told you Damon. I will always choose you,” she said loosing a hand so she could caress his face. He turned his face into it. “Even if that means letting you go. I don’t deserve you. But she does.”

She kissed him then. A soft thing, sweet as honey and bitter as poison. She pressed what she’d been hiding into his hand. “Get the other girl,” she breathed and then with a sharp tug and a whoosh of air she was gone. Damon tried to grab her but all his got was empty air. His throat clenched shut preventing him from screaming her name.

“Stefan thought he heard you two.” Damon looked behind him. It was Elena looking vibrant and jovial. Completely unaware of what his love for her cost or what Claire had done to give it to him. She looked around confusedly.

“Where’s Claire?”

“She’s gone,” Damon whispered looking down at what Claire had given him.  He could still feel her breathe on his lips, taste her kiss. In his hand was Elena’s necklace, a bit tarnished from the fire but otherwise perfectly fine and the photograph of him, Claire and Vincent in front of the Opera House. Tears stung his nose and made his vision blurry.

“What?” Elena said incredulous.

Damon clutched the necklace and that picture painfully; he couldn’t breathe as he looked up at Elena. “She set me free,” he choked.


	16. Chapter 16

Claire stood on the half crescent drive in front of the contemporary Mediterranean mansion with its swaying palm trees and sycamores, hydrangeas, pulmeria, crepe myrtle and ferns and looked at it mournfully. The Los Angeles sun shone brightly even in April and the air was hot and dry, blithely oblivious to Claire’s state of mind.

If letting Damon go was the hardest thing she had ever done, this was the second hardest. Once this house had been a home. The one she had shared with Vincent. Now it looked foreign and distant.

She briefly considered not going in but she’d made a promise to help Stefan and Damon find any information Vincent might have had on Klaus. So she took a deep breath and walked to the door. She tried the knob and found it unlocked, probably left that way in Alexander’s haste to escape with her and Vincent while they were still incapacitated. She dreaded what she might find inside.

Claire crossed the threshold into the foyer and stopped, gazing around her at the curving staircase, the carved mirrors that hung on the walls and her beloved paintings. The air inside was cool and comfortable but the somber weight of a life passed on settled around her heavily.  It was incredibly quiet, still, the ticking of the cuckoo clock on the wall across from her echoing in the silence. She could almost hear the murmur of Vincent’s voice and the strains of piano music off to her right, through the short passage that led to the Great Room, where Vincent’s piano was, close to the cozy fireplace surrounded by plush couches.

The memory pulled her like a moth to a flame and she drifted into the Great Room. It was just as she’d left it. Vincent’s white piano waiting for him to stroke the ivory keys and fill the house with music. The couches with throws tossed carelessly over the back. The dormant fireplace, it’s mantle covered in framed photographs and trinkets. All of it waiting for something that would never come.

Claire went to the mantle and reached up, plucking a silver framed black and white from the middle. The original of the one she had given to Damon. She gazed at it and choked. She was on her own now. She had no doubts that she could more than take care of herself. But it hurt to look at that picture. For so many reasons.

There was Damon, who she didn’t dare to think about right now. And Vincent. They’d been happy then, only it had all been a lie. But despite that, even though Claire knew Vincent had used her, betrayed her. She missed him. He’d been her constant companion for a century and the father she’d lost. She loved him and she hated it.  She never had mourned him properly. She’d been too hell-bent on surviving and then not, on avenging his death and saving Damon’s.

“Claire?!”

The voice made her jump. She’d been so lost in thought she hadn’t heard it and she whirled defensively. She barely stopped her impending attack in time enough to stare.

“Jensen?” she asked dully. It was the man she’d made her human distraction. She’d been certain Alexander had killed him. He was battered, his eyes sunken as if he hadn’t slept in days, a week old beard on his chin, a bandage around his wrist where she’d taken that fateful drink and there was a livid bruise on his temple half hidden by his mop of curly dark brown hair but impossibly he was alive.

“Thank God!” he said and shot for her. He threw his arms around her with desperate relief. “I thought you were dead. I looked everywhere but you and Vincent were gone. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You’re not dead,” Claire muttered. She didn’t mean it to sound as flat and uncaring as it did. It wasn’t that she didn’t care for him it wasn’t love but she was fond of him. She should be happier that he was alive but she stood there woodenly, the picture still clutched in her hand, as he stroked her hair lovingly.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know about the vervain I swear,” he apologized fervently. “By the time I realized it was too late. If I had known he was a vampire I never would have invited him in. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

He’d invited Alexander in? When Claire wondered absently. It hardly mattered now.

“Where’s Vincent?” Jensen asked as if he’d only just realized that Claire was alone.

“He’s dead,” Claire muttered.

“Oh my God. Claire, I am so sorry,” Jensen consoled. He tried to kiss her and Claire stepped back abruptly, appalled. He was what she’d made him. A living lie, compelled to think he was in love with her.

“You should go,” she said shortly.

“What? No. I want to be here,” Jensen said reaching toward her imploringly. “Just let me be here. For you.” That triggered something in her. He didn’t want to be here, for her or any other reason. He only thought he did. She seized him, a hand behind his head the other threateningly around his throat with barely controlled anger.

“I’m upset and you know what happens when I’m upset. You have to leave,” Claire told him gruffly. He put his hand over the one she had around his throat unafraid.

“No. You need to know that somebody cares about you. I care about you,” Jensen insisted fervently. He meant well. He believed it but it was a lie.

“You don’t care about me. Everything you think you feel is a lie. I compelled you. You need to leave,” she said warningly. She couldn’t stand the sight of him or the plaintive pleas.

“No. I love you Claire,” Jensen said with conviction, completely unable to believe it wasn’t real. And those words broke the last of her control. Her eyes flushed red and the veins around them spidered out, before she knew exactly what she was doing she bit into his neck viciously.

He screamed and tried to push her off but it was hopeless from the start. She bite down harder and he wailed. She flung him to the ground with a growl, panting heavily. He huddled there, his hand to his bleeding neck, looking up at her with such betrayal and hurt in his eyes and her rage ebbed, her eyes returned to normal. She’d never been violent with him it had always been ecstasy and pleasure. He hadn’t known what it was to really be bitten by a vampire.

Claire whimpered sorely and went to him, dropping down on the floor in front of him and gathered him off the ground, grimacing at what she’d done to him, battling to control her anger and need to lash out.  “Hey,” she said taking his head in her hands. “Look at me.” He tried to pull away but she made him look at her. Her eyes dilated as she focused on his warm brown ones. “You’re free of me. Your feelings are you own. Get out of here, before I kill you,” she compelled desperately. He looked undecided, as if despite what she had done, what she’d made him, he wanted to stay in spite of her compulsion. “Just go,” she whispered. “Go,” she said nodding at him, tears in her eyes. He didn’t move. “Now!” She screamed.

Jensen rose cautiously to his feet, backing away fearfully. His face was a mask of terror looking at her kneeling there on the floor his neck ripped open and his blood on her mouth. He winced sorrowfully as Claire sat there panting and trying not to go after him, predator instinct driving her to chase down her prey. Then he turned and bolted.

She listened to him running from her then she let out a bereft violent scream of her own, pulled her knees up, the picture clutched to her breast and sobbed alone.

 

***

Claire pulled her feet off the coffee table in front of her with a resounding scrape and tossed the latest leather bound book she’d finished into the cardboard box beside her chair. The box was almost full and it was the fifteenth one she’d filled. She’d begun the arduous and personally painful process of going through Vincent’s journals the morning after she’d run Jensen from the house. That had been three days ago.

It was difficult to read the books’ pages and see Vincent’s meticulous handwriting but they were all functional. Nowhere was there a trace of the man he had been in them, that at least made it a little easier. But she still ached bitterly from his loss and every page was a reminder that he’d never keep his beloved journals again.

She got up and trudged across the room to the bookshelf to pull down another book, picking up the tumbler of alcohol off the coffee table as she went with a clumsy clatter. Yes, she was drunk. She didn’t particularly care. There were empty blood bags on the desk on the opposite wall to go along with the empty liquor bottles. She could have hunted but she didn’t bother. A pit stop at the hospital and a very cooperative compelled nurse had landed her all the blood she’d need for a couple of weeks. Maybe she’d feel like hunting then.

Between the alcohol and her near obsessive search for something about Klaus in Vincent’s many journals she could ignore the heart ache and the sorrow, the hurt and betrayal she felt…for now. She couldn’t stay in this house. It held too many memories of a life she no longer had or wanted. She had no idea where she would go. Baltimore or Memphis possibly. Or Atlanta. Maybe New Orleans where the blood was free for the taking. She didn’t know. Maybe she’d just close her eyes, point at a map and go where ever her finger landed as long as it was away from here.

Claire tossed books that were definitively labeled as something she wasn’t looking for into the box after she thumbed through it to be sure there was no mention of Klaus and went on to the next, working her way around the huge library by finger lengths. Half the shelves were already bare. She tugged loose another volume and flipped it open. “Nicklaus” was all the title read.  Nicklaus...Klaus… could it be? What the hell, Claire thought. It was worth a shot.

She shuffled back to her chair and dropped down into it with the book in her lap. It was oddly flat and hollow and when she began turning pages, she discovered why. Half of them were missing, torn out. Claire guessed she should have expected as much. With Vincent bargaining with Elijah to use her as the tool to pump Damon for information in 1927 it shouldn’t surprise her that Vincent might have destroyed anything he had on the vampire Elijah was on cahoots with.  She let the pages leaf over rapidly with irritation and almost threw it across the room in a fit of useless anger but a few words on one of the pages caught her attention. She flipped back.

The pages in this part of the book had been ripped out carelessly and part of some of them remained, sentences cut off and lone words hanging on to tattered bits of the heavy parchment Vincent’ preferred. But two sentences remained intact and they burned away any haze the alcohol might have caused.

The Sun and The Moon Curse is a lie. No matter what preventative might be used, under no circumstances can the doppelganger be allowed to live after the ritual.

It was the twenty seventh. The full moon was tomorrow.

Claire scrambled for her phone, toppling herself inelegantly over the arm of the chair for it and landing with a thud on the floor, sending the box of books cascading over the floor. She hardly noticed in her haste to dial Stefan’s cell. It rang repeatedly as she righted herself.

“Damn it Stefan. Answer the phone,” she hissed frantically. She let it ring a few more times and then hung up, her fingers flying lightning fast over the surface of the Iphone as she tried texting instead.  As soon as she sent the message she dialed Elena. The phone rang as Claire paced around the library nervously but finally someone picked up.

“I’m afraid Elena can’t come to the phone right now. She’ll have to call you back.”

Claire’s blood ran cold in her veins. She knew that voice. She’d heard it many times over the last century, the calm soothing timber of a man of elegance and taste. Elijah. Who was supposed to be in the basement of the Salvatore Boarding House, daggered and all but dead.

“Hello?” he said again.

Claire bit her tongue and didn’t answer. She didn’t know how Elijah was undaggered or why or what he was doing with Elena’s phone but she couldn’t let him realize he knew her. It might cause a chain reaction that ended with Elena dead on the spot.  She hung up.

She squeezed the phone, moving back and forth in agitation. She wished she had bothered to get Bonnie’s number but she hadn’t and now, much as she dreaded it, there was only one person left for her to call. Damon.

With a deep breath, she dialed the phone and waited. “Pick up, pick up,” she muttered under her breath. The phone kept ringing. He didn’t answer. “Damn it!”  She fought the urge to throw the phone in a fit of ire. She knew Damon was probably hurt. She was hurt. She knew he was probably mad at her. But the one thing they agreed on was protecting Elena. He wouldn’t shun her no matter how wounded he was by what she’d done for his own good if it meant protecting Elena. She texted him. _It’s about Klaus._

Claire waited as patiently as she could as the hours passed, telling herself if Damon and Stefan were neck deep in the middle of rescuing Elena from Elijah because he had kidnapped her for Klaus, which was the only feasible explanation that made sense, then they wouldn’t be able to answer the phone.

But as the hours inexorably crept closer and closer to dawn she began to panic. One of them should have called back by now. She tried all three again to no avail. Something was desperately wrong. Claire looked at the clock. If she left now, she could make it to Mystic Falls by nightfall. She couldn’t wait for someone to answer their phone. Claire grabbed her jacket. She had to go back.

 

***

 

It took two days to reach Mystic Falls. By the time she’d reached the airport a torrential downpour had grounded all flights. Unwilling to wait and completely uncaring of how she got there or who she killed to do it, she’d compelled the first pilot she could lay hands on and forced him to fly her to Lynchburg Virginia despite the weather…only to be forced to land in some backwoods town in Missouri due to engine trouble. She’d heedlessly compelled her way through the tiny town’s sad excuse for an airport to get them back in the air but by then night had long since fallen. She had finally landed in Lynchburg an hour and a half ago, leaving the pilot alive but with no memory of what had happened. She hadn’t bothered to kill him, it would have taken too long. Forgoing the process of weaseling her way through a car rental , Claire instead compelled the first person she’d seen coming out the airport with a fast car.

Claire was beside herself with worry, certain that the worst had befallen Damon, Stefan and Elena. None of them were answering their phones and she had the horrible fear that Klaus had killed them all in his bid to get to Elena. Now she was stalking up the road that led to the Salvatore Boarding House a duffle bag full of stakes and vervain over her shoulder, the car left parked on the roadside. If they had survived but Klaus had them captive, tearing up the drive in a suped-up Honda would be disastrous. If they were dead, she’d hunt down Klaus herself.

Automatically, as she’d done a million times over the last couple of days, Claire dialed one of them again, oblivious to which one of them it was. The phone rang a few times and finally someone picked up.

“Claire?” said Damon tentatively.

“Oh, now you answer your phone!” Claire spat in relieved anger. Damon was alive. Were the others? “What the hell is going on? Do you know how many times I’ve tried to call you? Any of you? Please tell me Elena is still alive,” Claire railed, she’d reached the driveway of the Boarding House and stopped. She could see Damon, perfectly fine, standing in one of the upstairs rooms with his back to the window.

“Elena’s fine.”

“Oh, thank God,” Claire breathed. “What about Stef…”

“We’re all alive,” he said shortly. It stung for him to use that tone with her. She swallowed the lump that formed in her throat.

“I know you’re probably pissed at me and hurt but damn it Damon, I was calling about Klaus! It’s Elena!” she bit angrily as she watched him wander around the room from outside unaware she was there.

“You’re a little late,” Damon said. Claire flinched again.

“Things got hectic,” he said more softly.

“The Sun and The Moon Curse is a lie,” Claire said. “I don’t know what it really is but it’s not whatever you think it is.”

“We know. It was this whole ruse to break a curse on Klaus. Apparently he was a werewolf in waiting when he was turned and the ritual was to unleash his repressed werewolf side making him all but invincible,” Damon explained his voice mild.

Claire took a moment to absorb that and failed utterly. “Okay I’m not even going to try to wrap my head around that right this minute,” she said dismissively. “Elena is alive so that means you stopped him from doing the ritual. That gives us a month.”

“Not so much,” Damon said with chagrin.

“What?” Claire shrilled.

“We couldn’t stop him and then there was this whole thing with a potion Elijah had to save Elena’s life and a monumental game of bait and switch, then Elijah betrayed us and bailed at the last minute. It was this whole thing but long story short we didn’t stop him. He broke the curse. Like I said, hectic.” 

Claire gawked in horror and confusion at Damon in the window as he paced. “Please tell me he’s dead.”

“He’s no longer with us,” Damon said.

“Good because the curse being a lie wasn’t all I found out about. Half the journal was missing so I don’t know all of it but the one thing I do know is that no matter how Elena’s life was saved during the ritual under no circumstances is she supposed to be allowed to live after it,” Claire told him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Damon asked incredulously.

“I don’t know. But if the curse was on Klaus and he’s dead it shouldn’t matter anymore,” Claire said relieved.

“Probably but it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Damon said.

Claire nodded even though he couldn’t see her. “You’re right. I’ll see what else I can dig up. Though I don’t know that I’ll find anything, it can’t be a coincidence that Vincent knew Elijah and the journal about Klaus was half-gone. I can’t believe you were working with him.”

“I wasn’t. Not my idea. That was all Elena, she undaggered him and made a deal with him. That’s how we knew about the curse,” Damon confessed bitterly, he looked toward the door and then away.

“And she actually believed she could trust him? That was incredibly stupid,” Claire said as incredulously as Damon had been.

“That’s what I said.”

“I knew I should have compelled her,” Claire hissed.

“Yeah, from experience I don’t think it would have worked out very well,” Damon said regretfully.

“She’d be pissed but alive,” Claire countered. She saw Damon’s brows raise and him nod his head in reluctant agreement. “Well at least it answers my question about why Elijah answered Elena’s phone. I thought he’d kidnapped her.”

“He doesn’t know it was you does he?” Damon asked with sudden concern turning on his heel almost enough that he would have seen her if he looked up.

“No. I hung up without saying anything.”

“Good. Keep it that way,” Damon said as Claire watched him from below. He wandered across the room and picked up something, his head bowed to look at it. “You know you didn’t have to leave,” he said softly.

“Damon…,” Claire said just as softly.

“I get it. I’m a free man,” he said sadly as Elena walked into the room with him.. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I didn’t want to be freed.”

Claire winced and fought the overwhelming urge to make her presence known, to renege on what she’d said before but then Elena went to him, her vervain necklace gleaming at her throat again, reaching out to rub his arm and he favored her with a wan smile that she returned. Then she wrapped her arms around him, joining him in looking at whatever he was holding and Claire knew she couldn’t give in to the temptation.

“So where are you anyway?” he asked shaking off the sudden silence. “From the call clarity, if I didn’t know any better I’d swear you were in the front drive.” Claire smiled regretfully up at the window as Damon and Elena held each other.

“You know me. Wherever the wind takes me.”

“Yeah,” Damon said distractedly then, “Take care of yourself Claire.”

“You too, Damon,” Claire said roughly and then she hung up.  She watched them a moment longer as they spoke to each other briefly and then Damon enveloped Elena, his chin resting on her hair. They hadn’t needed her after all. Claire turned around and walked away.

 

***

 

“Was that Claire?” Elena asked hesitantly as Damon hung up the phone.

“Yeah, she was just telling me what we already found out. Guess Vincent didn’t know anymore than we did,” Damon lied. Elena looked at the picture he was holding of him, Claire and another man in front of a theater. She frowned sadly at it.

“That Vincent?”

“Yeah,” Damon commented absently.

“He looks like a nice guy. It’s hard to believe he betrayed Claire the way he did,” she said. The three of them looked so happy together, Elena thought.

“I didn’t think he had it in him that’s for sure,” Damon said, his eyes on him and Claire in the picture.

“Did you tell her what happened?” Elena asked trying to draw his attention away from it. He looked mournful and heartbroken.

“You mean did I tell her we royally screwed up, Klaus broke the curse, I tried to turn you, you died but didn’t, I got bit by a werewolf, my brother handed himself over to Klaus in order to save me and is now who knows where doing God knows what with an invincible werewolf/vampire hybrid? No. I didn’t tell her everything went to hell in a hand basket,” Damon said bitterly. “I told her we saved you, we’re all alive, Elijah bailed and that Klaus isn’t a problem. I may have made it sound like Klaus was dead without actually saying he was.”

“What about Katherine?” Elena asked.

“Hell no,” Damon said as Elena pulled him closer. “Tell her that the bitch vampire who I left her for and handpicked her to give to a madman to become his vampire bride, ruined her life, may have been directly responsible for ruining her life again thirty seven years later and then helped conspire with him to kill her and Vincent is still alive and well? Because that wouldn’t end badly. Claire would hunt Katherine down like a rabid dog and then Katherine would kill her.  Claire’s been through enough.”

Elena put her head against Damon’s arm comfortingly. “I still don’t understand why she just up and left like that,” Elena said. “I know she loves you. You love her. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Claire had her reasons,” Damon said morosely, eyes back on the picture.

“I’m going to miss her,” Elena admitted. Damon sighed heavily and then turned embracing her in a full hug.

“Me too.”

 

 

***

 

Back in Los Angeles, Claire spent the next several days packing. There was little else for her left to do. Her old life was gone. Most if not all of her promise to find information on Klaus was discharged because she honestly didn’t think she would find anything more, but that didn’t stop her from checking everything before she packed it.

There was nothing left for her here. The only place there was something for her, she’d left behind for the foreseeable future with the only caveat being that there was a future to be seen...in sixty or seventy years. So for the next six or seven decades Claire had to find something to occupy her time. So she told herself.

She could have left everything where it stood but Vincent’s Journals were too valuable to leave behind and though her old life was dead and gone, there were pieces of it she wanted to remember. She could have hired—or compelled—movers as well but for some reason she wanted to do this herself or at least most of it.

Claire was upstairs wrapping a Zsolnay blue cobalt porcelain vase of a maiden and a crow in newspaper when she heard the distinctive resonating chime of the doorbell. She tucked it carefully into the box at her feet and went to see who it was. She wasn’t expecting visitors but occasionally a salesman failed to heed the ‘no soliciting’ sign at the foot of the drive.

Claire looked through the peephole and sighed at what she saw. She opened the door and stood there looking wearily at the knocker.

“I knew I should have added ‘and never come back’ when I compelled you. Are you really this stupid?”

Jensen looked back at her pleadingly. “Just let me explain.”

Claire raised a brow at him. She really had no call to be angry with him. He hadn’t done anything. It was her who had done it to him but she was. “Guess so.”

“I want to be here,” Jensen insisted fervently. The bruise on his forehead had faded considerably and the bite on his wrist was all but gone but the gash in his neck was only half healed, covered with a glaringly white bandage. He looked like a kicked puppy.

“Go home, Jensen,” she said and started to shut the door in his face. He threw himself at the door, wedging himself in the frame so it wouldn’t shut. Claire half growled at him.

“This is my home,” Jensen said.

“Not anymore,” Claire said. She started to push him out the door. “What part of ‘you’re free of me’ did you not understand? Or was the bite in your neck not a strong enough message?”

“I don’t care about that!” Jensen cried.

“Wow, that’s courage,” Claire mocked him cruelly.

“I care about you!”

“You were a windup toy, Jensen. A poor copy of the real thing I compelled to amuse me,” Claire said with guilty irritation. She caught his eye and exerted her will. “Go home. Don’t come back.”

“I took vervain. You can’t compel me.” He said it very quickly and then stood there trembling like a tuning fork.

“That’s probably the first clever thing you’ve done,” she said. She was honestly surprised. He’d gone to the trouble to vervain himself before he’d come to make his case. That was commitment to his cause, she’d give him points for tenacity. But it didn’t change the fact that he didn’t really care or what she’d done to him. She was also honestly tempted to finish what she’d started. “Stupid but clever.”

“Just let me stay,” Jensen pleaded hurriedly. “We knew each other a month before you compelled me, before I knew what you were. I already cared, Claire.”

That gave Claire pause for a moment but only a moment. “When you thought I was human.”

“And then I knew different. You released me from your compulsion, Claire. I’ve been around you long enough to know how it works. You’re a vampire. So what? It wouldn’t have mattered to me even if you hadn’t compelled me but you never gave me that chance.”

Claire cast her eyes down and swallowed at his words, her anger abating. “I’m leaving Los Angeles, Jensen.”

“Then take me with you. I’m not asking for you to love me or for you to let me love you. I just want to be your friend. Vampire or human, the person I met before you compelled me was not a bad person. Give me the chance you didn’t before.”

Claire stood there staring at his plaintive expression, wavering between lashing out and giving in. She wanted to believe he really felt that way. She wanted to believe what he believed but she knew the truth.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Claire said. “I’m a vampire, Jensen. I do things. I kill people.”

It was Jensen who swallowed hard now at her admission.  He’d never seen her kill before. He knew she fed on human blood, half the time he’d been the source of it but that part of being a vampire was unknown to him.

“Why do you kill people?” he asked hesitantly. She looked up at him helplessly.

“I like it. It’s in my nature. It’s who I am.”

For a moment, he looked utterly horrified and Claire almost laughed. They always ran away screaming once they saw her for what she really was. Then he stood up to his full height and took a deep breath.

“Then I guess I’ll have to get used to it.”

“I could have killed you,” she pointed out.

“But you didn’t,” he countered.

She did laugh then a harsh barking sound. “Unbelievable.” She looked at him and he looked back resolutely. Claire sighed. “I know I’m going to regret this,” she muttered and stepped aside waving him into the house.

He smiled brightly and dashed inside as Claire followed after him, shutting the door behind her.

“Wait. You were standing outside. It’s the middle of the day. How did you…,” Jensen started say thumbing back over his shoulder.

“You just noticed that huh?” Claire chuckled dryly.

“How?”

“Long story,” Claire said walking through the foyer.

“Where are we going?” Jensen asked.

“Don’t know yet,” she answered him and picked up one of the empty cardboard boxes cluttering the foyer. “But you’re helping pack.”


	17. Chapter 17

A few days later Claire and Jensen were in Vincent’s bedroom. They’d done it last. Claire hadn’t wanted to do it until she absolutely had too. She had finished packing all of his personal belongings she wanted to keep. All there was of his three hundred and seventy five year life …fit in a two by two box. It made his long life feel so mournfully insignificant. She possessively wouldn’t let Jensen near it and he had dutifully not pressed the matter but now they were moving the furniture. For that she didn’t begrudge his help.

“So let me get this straight,” Claire said. She was standing there with her arms crossed while Jensen, covered in sweat his plain white t-shirt clinging to him like a second skin, attempted to heave the mattress and box springs of Vincent’s bed against the wall. “Alexander pretended to be a casting director days before he abducted me and Vincent?”

“And then he suggested we have lunch. I went of course. We had lunch, we had a few drinks and then I came home. He said he would be by in a day or two, he had seen me in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and wanted to discuss me taking a part in a play he was producing.” Jensen stopped his story to grunt as he tried to pick up the California King Mattress. He couldn’t raise it more than a few inches.

Absently Claire walked over and lifted it without even blinking, ponytail swinging and gave it a light push to tilt it against the wall.

“And then?”

 Jensen gave her a look and tried to move the box springs. “Then, just like he said, he came by. It was four in the afternoon I had no clue he was a vampire. You can’t walk in the sun.”

“Not without a daylight ring. He had one,” Claire said.

“Are you ever going to tell me how you got yours? I mean you get kidnapped, you’re missing for a month, Vincent dies, and you come back with a ring that lets you walk in the daylight. How does that happen?”

“Not today,” Claire said shortly, unwilling to confide in him. She didn’t want to talk about Damon, Vincent or what had happened.

“You’re going to have to talk about it sometime,” Jensen muttered under his breath. He tried to lift the box springs again, failed and fell back on his rear with a grunt.

“What was that?” Claire said sharply.

“I know you heard me,” Jensen said getting up and brushing off the back of his jeans. “Alexander turned you didn’t he? I remember you saying something about it once.”

“Jensen,” Claire said warningly. He held his hands up in placation.

“Alright. I’m not pushing. I just think you should talk about it. I’m being a friend.”

“Be a little less friendly and move the box springs,” Claire retorted. “Then what happened?” she said, prodding him to continue his story.

“He asked if he could come in and talk. So, me being clueless, I invited him in and we had a cup of coffee. We talked. He offered me the part, I accepted, he left,” Jensen said with another heaving groan. His hair was flopped over his face ignored in his effort to move the box springs. He finally got it up and tilted it over. It flopped against the mattress with a dull sound.

“Then that night…,” Jensen said his voice becoming guilty.

“I fed on you, there was vervain in your blood and Alexander came back,” Claire supplied for him.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Jensen said sadly, shaking his head.

“You didn’t know,” Claire excused. “That was very well planned out though. Alexander was smart but he wasn’t patient. He was more direct. That sounds more like Katherine,” Claire said walking over and gripping the edge of the bed frame and pulling it aside was if it weighted nothing. “I shouldn’t be surprised. She was helping him.”

“Who’s Katherine?” Jensen asked coming to join her from the other side of the room. It was almost completely empty now. Everything had been packed or put in storage. Their voices echoed in the emptiness.

“Oh no one. Just this bitch vampire who likes to screw up other people’s lives for kicks,” Claire snarked. 

Something creaked loudly.

“What was that?” Claire asked turning to look for the source of the sound.

“What was what?” Jensen asked as he took another step. The boards beneath his feet creaked again, the sound vibrating hollowly as if the boards had empty space beneath them. He was standing where Vincent’s bed had been.

“That,” Claire said and shooed him aside. He looked at her perplexed as he hastily got out of her way. Claire knelt and rapped on the floor where he’d been standing. It thudded hollowly again.

 Quickly she let her fingers glide around the edges of the boards looking for a way to get them loose, none of them were. They were nailed in as if they had never been removed but something was definitely beneath them.  Claire caught her nails under the edge of one and pulled, the secured floorboards no obstacle to a vampire. They came up like she was using a crowbar with an anvil dropped on the other end.

In moments she’d cleared a space big enough a person could have hopped down through it…if it weren’t already occupied by a large antique trunk.

“Help me with this,” Claire said.

“You look like you’re doing just fine on your own,” Jensen said. Claire glared at him and he hastened over grasping the opposite handle and helping her lift it out of the hole. They set it on the floor next to the hole and both stared at it.

“Why did he have that down there?” Jensen asked.

“To hide it,” Claire said her brows pulled together. “Something you’ll learn about vampires. We’re very fond of secrets. They keep us alive.”

Why had Vincent had this trunk hidden under the floorboards of his bed? By the look of the floor, they’d been there since they’d moved in twenty years ago or Vincent had been meticulous in making it look that way. The trunk was leather covered and ornate, gilding along the seams and embossing covering the surface. The lock was equally intricate, an old story lock that had been exquisitely engraved in such fine detail that it was difficult to determine what exactly it was supposed to depict, some sort of flower motif it looked like.

Jensen dropped down in front of it and reached for the lock. “No key,” he said. As soon as he touched the lock he yelped and jerked his hand back. Claire looked at him quizzically as he pulled away, his hand cradled to his chest. The flesh of his palm was burned.

“That was unexpected,” Claire said mildly.

“It burned me!” Jensen spat incredulously. Claire took his hand and looked at it. It was angry and red, a flattened full surface welt raised on his skin. It could have been worse.

“It’s not that bad,” Claire insisted as if her were being a wimp about it. 

“What the hell!” Jensen said in outrage. “Why would it do that?”

“It’s spelled,” Claire said, kneeling down in front of it and giving it a hard look. Why would Vincent have had a witch magically lock a trunk? Who exactly had he intended to keep out of it? More to the point, he’d had a witch at his disposal and never mentioned it to her. Claire scowled feeling more betrayed than ever. 

“Spelled?” Jensen asked.

“By a witch,” Claire clarified.

“Wait. Magic is real?” Jensen asked in disbelief. Claire held the hand with her daylight ring on it up and wriggled her fingers.

“Some of it.”

Jensen made a noise like he was trying to figure out what to say to that and couldn’t come up with anything.  Claire would have laughed if she wasn’t feeling sullen. He had no problem believing in vampires but give him a magic lock and he became indignant. “So how do we get it open?”

Claire rolled her eyes slightly and reached for the lock. A burn wasn’t going to hurt her. She gripped it tight intending to break it off when she felt a sharp stab. She jerked her hand back and shook it, offended.

“See. Burnt you too,” Jensen said defensively.

“It bit me,” Claire corrected. She looked at her palm, a smear of blood left where the lock had well…bit her. Jensen snickered, Claire looked at him balefully.

“What? A vampire getting bitten. That’s just funny,” Jensen said. She might have been annoyed with him but for the lock drawing her attention back. A drop of her blood still clung to the surface and as it dripped into the hole where a key would go, the lock moved. Claire stared in rapt fascination at it.  The intricate embossing reversed itself and then flipped over. The lock popped open with a grating click.

“Now that’s cool,” Jensen muttered.

Cautiously this time, Claire reached for the lock but this time nothing happened. She pulled it free of the hook and tossed it aside, anxious to see what was inside that Vincent had felt needed such stringent protection. She pushed the lid up and peered inside. It was filled with papers. Old ones, newer ones, some bound like scrolls, others loose and disorganized, still others in neat little folders. There were maps and charts, lists and diagrams but what drew her in completely was a leather-bound journal that had a rubber band around it with an envelope beneath it. In Vincent’s neat script it had one word written on it; _‘Claire’_.

“What’s in it?” Jensen asked, stepping forward to look over her shoulder still nursing his burned hand. “Papers?” he said in disbelief. “The magic box contained a bunch of papers?”

“Go finish packing the kitchen,” Claire said abruptly.

“The kitchen is done,” Jensen said.

“Don’t argue,” Claire said sharply.

“Okay! I’m going,” Jensen said and left before she could become angry with him. Then Claire picked up the journal with shaking hands and sat down on the floor. She pulled the envelope open and withdrew the piece of paper inside. Then, her heart thudding in her chest, she unfolded the thick piece of stationary and read it.

 

***

_My Dearest Claire,_

_If you are reading this, I am dead. Contained in this box are journals and notebooks in which you will find information that I never revealed to you. But if I am gone, you must know it. Your life may depend on it._

_I have done things I abhor to protect the one thing I value most. You. If anyone can understand that, it’s you. Your capacity to love beyond all reason, recklessly and foolishly, is a gift. Carry it with you as I will carry my regret, always and forever._

_I don’t ask for your forgiveness or for you to forget. I ask only that you believe this: I love you, as I’ve always loved you and always will. I am proud of you. You are everything I ever hoped you could be. All I did, I did for love._ _I was only trying to protect you._

_I am sorry,_

_Vincent_

Claire read the short paragraphs, her breath frozen in her throat until it hurt, every word more blurry than the last through a haze of tears and felt her heart break all over again. And for the first time she cried quietly in the empty silence, bereft and rage-less, for all she’d lost.  It was a long time before she could bring herself set aside that simple piece of paper that held so much.

When she had finally composed herself enough that she wasn’t a quivering mass anymore she had to work up the nerve to open the journal the letter had been attached to.

What could possibly have been so horrible that he had kept it a secret for a century? Why hadn’t he told her? What terrible things had he done in the name of protecting her? What had been so bad that he had felt betraying her was better than the truth? She was afraid to find out but she screwed up her courage and opened the journal.

Every page was hand written, the places and dates neatly labeled, the texts from the personal journal Claire had never thought he kept. But what stilled her heart more than the voice of Vincent that the words carried so clearly she could almost hear him speaking in her head was the story it told…

_London, April 28, 1675_

_It has been three years since Armand left. I suppose he is off doing what he always does, finding someone else to while away his time with. I hear rumors that he is back home now, in Paris. I thought I had found a companion I would never lose in him. Someone who could not die as my little Abigail did, as Gabriela did. I thought I might spend the next century without seeing another of my kind. Though I have no issue enjoying all the delights humans have to offer I miss an open companionship and that a human cannot give me._

_However, I met someone tonight. Another vampire. She took me quite by surprise actually. For just an instant, she stole my breath she so reminded me of Gabriela with her long dark hair but then she turned and I knew it was just my imagination running away with me. Mightn’t my Abigail have looked like her, if her life had not been cruelly stolen so young by the plague?_

_Her name is Katherine, Katherine Pierce. She is a very charming young woman and very intelligent by all accounts, though looks can be deceiving. She is a good century and a half my elder. I find I am enjoying the company of another vampire. We shared a drink or two and spoke of our tragic pasts. It seems hers is as sad as my own. Unfortunately, she was alarmed when she discovered I was not interested in her womanly charms but she accepted it readily enough. I think we could be friends._

Claire read the entry again and couldn’t decided if she was angry, shocked, amused or all of the above. Vincent met Katherine nearly two hundred years before Katherine had become involved with the Salvatores? Two hundred years before Claire had even been born? And he’d liked her? Though, Claire had to admit the image of Katherine trying to seduce Vincent was downright hilarious. Trying to withhold judgment and squelch the betrayal she felt, Claire read on.

_London, May 16, 1675_

_Katherine has made a wonderful suggestion. Why might not I start to keep a chronicle of all the stories and legends I hear of our kind? I was a humble second son of a courtier who found his passion as a set designer at the theater when I was human but I always did love a good story. It is not as if there is anyone to keep a history of our kind with any accuracy, prone as our kind is to hiding our existence for our very survival. I already keep a personal journal, what is a few more?_

_I have been at loose ends for a while now with nothing to do with my time but indulge myself wantonly in whatever life has to offer but I find it to be lacking. I have no purpose, no aim. Armand was my purpose but with him gone I need something to do with my time._

_Katherine’s suggestion is perfect. She is quite helpful and enthusiastic about it in fact. She spent all night pouring one fantastical tale after another into my ear and insisting that I put them to paper immediately. She even gifted me a journal to put it all down in._

_Katherine says ‘knowledge is power’ and she is right. Perhaps I have not only found a purpose but a calling. Mightn’t vampires far older and more powerful than either of us come to me when word gets around for information? And mightn’t I secure my place among our kind with that information?_

Katherine had been the one to start Vincent on the path to his love of vampire history? It had been Katherine? How far back did her involvement in all this go? What was the purpose? Claire felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

_London, June 7, 1675_

_Katherine has begun to take a fascinated interest in my family history. It is quite odd to be frank. She insists though that our pasts are important to who we are and we must never forget them. I suppose she is right but why is she so interested in my dearly departed wife and daughter so suddenly?_

That was peculiar. Why would Katherine care about Vincent’s family? Vincent had been turned by Armand in 1672. He’d only been a vampire three years when Katherine met him and he hadn’t been any one of note when he’d been human.

_London, June 9, 1675_

_Katherine is gone. Fled in the night. She was very frightened. I begged her to tell me what was wrong but she would not speak of it. She pleaded with me to never tell anyone of our acquaintance and promised to see me again one day.  She asked me to promise that I won’t give up on my chronicles.  She left with the confession she feels that we are like family. It was quite sweet of her. I hope she will be all right. I have grown fond of the mischievous little creature._

Katherine being personable? She seemed nearly likeable in fact. And afraid? Claire couldn’t imagine Katherine being afraid of anything.  Why hadn’t Katherine wanted anyone to know she knew Vincent? Claire readjusted her position on the floor, uncaring of how long she’d been reading and went on. The next entry skipped ahead two hundred and thirty five years…

_New York City, September 18, 1910_

_The world is full of surprises. Not the least of which come embodied in the visage of Katherine Pierce.  Imagine my delighted shock when out of nowhere, there comes a knock on my door and when I answer it there stands Katherine, whom I haven’t seen in over two hundred years and thought dead in a tragic fire in 1864?_

_She was overjoyed that I never gave up my chronicling and was quite taken with the knowledge that, though I had not seen her in two centuries I had kept tabs on her. In fact, I have more journals full of stories, legends and hearsay about vampires from all over the world, including Katherine, than I know what to do with. The knowledge they contain has served me very well though I have decided that I prefer the quiet life of keeping the histories for posterity’s sake rather than the tangle of intrigue trading in the knowledge put me in._

_Word got around over the centuries and before I knew it, I had vampires older than written history coming to me for information about any number of things. I traded them the information for power and prestige but when one in particular , a man named Elijah whom I had come to think of as a friend of sorts, began asking about Katherine I would not tell him anything I knew, of which I know much. She is my friend. I will not betray her. Were he and his ilk who she was running from all those years ago when she fled in the night?_

_Whomever she was running from and whatever she has been up to that I do not know, it has changed her. She’s not the girl I once knew. She’s darker now, more devious. A shadow hangs around her that drowns out the sad but stalwart woman I met so long ago. It makes me nervous to be around her, as if I am constantly waiting for her to do something completely diabolical and conniving. But she is still Katherine. With all the charm and wit that implies and she came baring an even more astonishing surprise then her sudden appearance on my doorstep._

_She hadn’t come for a social call. She’d come to plead for my help._

_It seems there is a girl, now a vampire, in Savannah Georgia, who means a great deal to Katherine, who has gone completely feral. Apparently, Katherine knew her by association when she was human and knew the vampire who turned her. Alexander Favre, who I know from my chronicles is a madman. He left the poor girl with no knowledge of how to be a vampire and so she has been surviving the best she can on the streets of Savannah’s market district._

_For a moment as she was telling me all this, she was the Katherine I knew in London. She was greatly distressed by the girl’s predicament and very much wished to see to the girl’s well being. But because Katherine lives like a gypsy, still running from whomever she was running from two hundred years ago and who she still will not tell me about, she believes herself unsuitable for the job._

_She knows my history and immediately thought of me. Katherine thinks the girl needs a father figure and she knows how much the loss of my Abigail still haunts me. She tells me the girl is special and needs protecting. She’s certain I’ll be more than capable of providing the girl with all Katherine cannot and she has begged so fervently how can I say no? I never could refuse Katherine anything._

_I am leaving for Savannah tomorrow by rail. Katherine however, like the wind, has gone her own way as quickly as she came. She says it is too dangerous for her to stay any longer. Whatever haunts her footsteps I hope one day she is free of it._

Katherine had sent Vincent looking for her? Like an errand boy sent after a stray pet? She was concerned for Claire? Oh certainly. That was why she set Alexander on her in the first place. Claire didn’t know if she should laugh darkly or be furious. Katherine. Katherine had been walking in Claire’s footsteps before she’d made them for centuries before she’d even been born. How long had Vincent known Elijah? Had Elijah always known Vincent knew Katherine? Had Vincent been Katherine’s tool from the very beginning?

_Savannah, September 22, 1910_

_I found her. Just as Katherine said, the girl was skulking around the backstreets of the market district. I’m lucky I found her tonight. She’s gaunt and thin, starved and filthy. She looked like a wild child, one of the ones you read about that has been raised by wolves. Obviously, she has been starving herself until bloodlust overcomes her and then woe betide any one she happens across. That’s how I found her in fact. Huddled like an animal, over a drunken reveler that she had killed, who’d been unlucky enough to stumble down the alley. She saw me and ran in terror. I think she feared I’d kill her._

_I tracked her to her…lair. I dare not call it a home. She was living in the old abandoned tunnels beneath the city like a beggar. She doesn’t just look like an animal, she acts like one. She attacked me and I tried to reason with her but she’s too far gone for that. She’s all predatory instinct. I had to break her neck to capture her._

_Katherine severely understated the condition the girl was in. I don’t know if I can repair the damage done to the girl or not. I hope so. Now I wonder if I can get her in a bath?_

Claire frowned bitterly. She remembered those days all too well. Dark and frightening. Constantly terrified but driven by an overwhelming hunger she couldn’t control and didn’t know how to fight, filled with rage and hate that burned like molten lava. She had to shake herself to remove the memory. It felt like a physical weight on her body.

_Savannah, September 28, 1910_

_She’s sentient after all. It took me a week, more destroyed drapery than I’ve seen in my lifetime and copious amounts of broken furniture but she’s not an animal anymore. She’s well fed and calm now, though she shies at the slightest provocation. It will take time but I think she will come around._

_Her name is Claire Dominic I’ve discovered. Color me awestruck to find out she’s the Claire Dominic whose star was rising in the Opera circuit not five years ago. She has begun to talk to me, slowly I’m earning her trust. She’s beautiful, with hair dark as sable and eyes that are a rich mahogany. She reminds me desperately of my little Abigail, it’s something in the way she’s smiles. But stranger still there’s something in the way she looks at me when she thinks I don’t see, a weighting and measuring that makes me think of Katherine. Strangest of all? I could swear I’ve seen her before. Not in some newspaper or other but somewhere in my everyday life, long ago. It nags me that I can’t seem to place why Claire looks like someone I should know._

Claire smiled bittersweetly at the recollection. She’d hated Vincent in the first few days. She’d been convinced he wanted to keep her like Alexander had. She’d despised being confined and reviled all Vincent’s attempts to tame her, wanting only to drown in blood and anger. But eventually, she’d learned to trust him. But why did Vincent think he should know her from anywhere but the Opera? And why was it that she had reminded him of Katherine? Even Stefan had said she reminded him of her. It didn’t make sense.

_New York, October 10, 1910._

_I’ve taken Claire back home with me. She’s coming along very rapidly. She’s ‘human’ again now and while she still spends any time I am not talking to her cloistered in her room in a fit of melancholy, it will change. She’ll be herself again. I swear it._

_I finally remember where I thought I knew Claire from. My own living room. Two hundred and fifty years ago.  When I was married to Gabriela, before the plague took her and my Abigail, many portraits hung around our home. Of my family, of hers. One of those was a painting of Gabriela’s grandmother. The painting has been collecting dust in my attics and basements for centuries as I cart it around with all the other vestiges of my former human life. I suppose I could not let it go because it was connected to my daughter. It was that painting that I kept recalling._

_I can’t even remember what Gabriela said the woman’s name was, she never spoke of her very often, but what I thought was just resemblance is anything but. It is Claire. She’s a dead ringer.  Down to the last nuance, they look alike. It’s not possible._

_Suddenly I’m reminded that Katherine was oddly interested in my wife’s family when she met me and I also note that Katherine came to me specifically to ask I take Claire into my care. That cannot be a coincidence. Something is going on. I have to find Katherine. It all goes back to her. It has to._

Claire sat there and stared at the page blankly for several minutes. What did that mean? She looked like Vincent’s long dead grandma-in-law? Why would she look like her? Why would Katherine care? A terrible notion began to settle in the back of her mind as she continued reading, one she willed not to be true.

_New York, February 21, 1911_

_I still have not found Katherine but perhaps some of my questions about all this can be answered a different way._

_If Katherine was so interested in my wife’s family in 1675, if she sent me to take care of Claire who is the exact copy of my late wife’s grandmother, might not Claire be related to me in some way? If so, why didn’t Katherine simply say so? There has to be a reason but until I find Katherine I shall have to make do with what I can get from Claire._

_I haven’t shown Claire the painting. What would I say? How would she react? I’ve only just gotten her back to acting like a proper person, I dare not risk undoing my hard work._

_However, I have begun asking about her heritage in the guise of personal interest and to get to know her better. It’s not much of a lie to be honest. She has grown on me. I’m quite fond of her and with each passing day I find I grow fonder. As she’s come out of her shell, she’s blossomed and proved to be a very intelligent if incredibly stubborn young woman with a blithely untamed streak that would win the heart of anyone who met her if she’d only allow herself to let go of her hatred of her sire. But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, Claire’s heritage._

_It was hard won since Claire would just as soon never speak of her parents again since they tried to kill her and it pains her greatly to even speak their names but I coaxed her to tell me what she knew of her family history. It’s not much but perhaps I can trace what she has given me._

_Her father, Richard Dominic, seems to be of little note when it comes to family lineages. A merchant’s son of a merchant’s son back ten generations who came to America in the early 1800s. Their family is well documented. It’s her mother who interests me._

_It seems Eva Taylor was born in 1860 in Lovingston, Virginia, a little farming town in southwest Virginia to Dahlia Taylor (nee Markova) and Thomas Taylor. Thomas was killed serving in General Groom’s army in 1864 during the Civil War. That left Dahlia to either remarry or raise her toddling daughter alone. She remained a widow and never had any more children._

_But it seemed imperative to her that her line continue. She wasn’t concerned with her deceased husband’s line but her own. Very odd for a woman. It is usually the husband’s line that is considered of greatest importance. Claire never knew why it was so important to Dahlia, only that it was._

_Thus, Eva was married off to Richard who, upon marrying, stayed for a few years in Lovingston before he decided to return to his hometown and take over the family business from his father. So it was that Claire was born in Lovingston as her mother was, though they moved to Columbus Georgia before she was old enough to remember it._

_It was that imperative from Claire’s grandmother that led to much strife between Claire and her parents since Claire had no interest in marrying simply to beget more Markova children. Stubborn to the end, she refused to marry for less than true love. I hope she finds it one day._

_At any rate, Claire knew very little of her grandmother Dahlia other than that she was Bulgarian by way of England and that her family came to America sometime in the early 1800s as her father’s family did. To hear Claire tell it, Dahlia herself either didn’t know much about her lineage or would not disclose what she knew. Again very strange._

_I suppose if I wish to discover more about Claire’s heritage I will have to trace the Markovas to England. Strange though, that they sailed from England, my homeland, to Virginia. Markova is not a common name in England nor is Bulgarian heritage._

_Stranger still and most certainly in some way connected…according to maps Lovingston Virginia is just south of Mystic Falls Virginia. The town where I thought Katherine had burned in 1864. The same year Claire’s grandfather died in the war. It’s so close in fact that the two communities are almost part and parcel of each other, only a thin stretch of forest separates them._

_If I cannot find Katherine, perhaps I shall try Claire’s birthplace. Surely, there are records there that trace the Markova family’s arrival in Virginia._

No. Not possible, Claire told herself. She flipped to the next page so fast she almost tore the page from the journal.

_New Orleans, March 17, 1911_

_It took me five months but I found Katherine, much to her displeasure. I immediately demanded answers. Katherine is a sight when she’s angry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her angry before but she came clean. I wish she hadn’t._

_Katherine claims that Claire is a doppelganger. And that she is too. What is this madness?_

_To further complicate things, Katherine admitted it was she who provoked Alexander Favre into turning Claire.  Why did she want Claire turned you might ask?_

_Apparently, doppelgangers are only created by magic. Duplicates of their ancestors that came before them, meant to serve as loopholes or binding agents to a witch’s curse or spell hundreds of years down the road. A way to undo the magic they have wrought centuries after the fact, if not millennia. But the trick? The doppelganger has to be human to be used and a doppelganger can only occur in a line of direct descent from the ancestor of the same gender. With Claire a vampire, Katherine ensured her family line died out and that whatever her purpose, Claire could never be used to accomplish it._

_Except that Katherine doesn’t know what Claire’s doppelganger line was created for. Nor will she tell me what hers was created for._

_Unbelievably, it gets worse._

_Claire is related to me through marriage and so is Katherine. Apparently, it was no coincidence that Katherine and I met when we did. She was in London trying to trace her own family lineage, the Petrovas, to find which line would produce the next doppelganger in her line after her. She discovered that in 1590 the woman in direct descent from her daughter –Lilyana Bulgari-- had two daughters. Silviya and Svetlana Bulgari. Not knowing which daughters’ descendents would produce her doppelganger in the future, she traced both daughters’ progeny._

_Svetlana was the wild one and ran off to Italy where she became a courtesan and begat one of her lover’s children in 1603, a daughter that was--according to custom and law--given up, a year  before she was killed under mysterious circumstances that no one seems to know what were. Rumor had it she consorted with witches and thus she was found, atop a pentagram of salt, her throat slit alongside an alleged witch who had been torn to pieces by what, by Katherine’s description of the murder scene, could only have been a vampire. She was twenty-four when she died, ironically the same age Claire was turned. Katherine insists that some sort of spell was performed but doesn’t know what or why and without someone who was witness to the casting, it’s impossible to know._

_So Katherine did the only thing she could, she continued to keep tabs on her growing family tree._

_In 1630, Svetlana’s daughter gave birth to my dead wife, Gabriela. It might all have ended there were it not for the fact that Katherine claims that my Abigail was not the only child Gabriela bore. It would seem that before we were married, under much disgrace, Gabriela had another daughter out of wedlock, whom her family immediately gave away. She was adopted by a family named Carlyle and called Helena. It is from her that Claire descends._

_It was not until Katherine went to Mystic Falls tracing her family lineage—so she says, I begin to doubt Katherine’s motivations--that she found that both branches had converged on the same area. Though no doppelganger was yet apparent and Katherine still won’t tell me why she faked her death in 1864, she kept an eye on her progeny. She was quite shocked years later to find that the baby born to Eva, Claire’s mother, not in Lovingston but in Mystic Falls in 1880, was the spitting image of Svetlana. It was then, she said that she knew that whatever the spell was that the witch performed, it had included a doppelganger as a loophole. She claims not to have known that there was a doppelganger until she discovered Claire living happily, if rebelliously, with her parents in Columbus Georgia._

_It was then that she set Alexander on Claire, because she was ‘family’ and because of Katherine’s own tragic past (her entire family was slaughtered by a vampire named Klaus for reasons she will not disclose) she thought having Alexander turn her was kinder than simply killing her. Either accomplished the same end._

_She came to me because, as she put it, ‘Alexander made a mess of things’, and needed someone to watch after Claire since she is a doppelganger linked to an unknown spell. Katherine claims that it cannot be a coincidence that a second line of doppelgangers have been created from her line, that they must be connected to the first set and that the spell that they were created for must be related to the one she is linked to. She will not, however, tell me a bloody damn thing about what hers is!_

_That being said, Katherine claims that those she has been running from would also want Claire if they knew of her. For this reason, she has never and will never reveal herself to Claire. She wants no connection known between them. Katherine says that the danger would be far too immense. I believe that, if nothing else. Whoever has been after Katherine, has been chasing her for over four hundred years._

_Katherine begrudgingly told me all this with one tremendous caveat that changes every belief I ever had about her. Claire’s lineage needs to be kept a secret by any means necessary. As does the fact, that Katherine isn’t dead. If I tell no one, Katherine lets Claire live. If I do…she’ll kill her.  She claims she will ‘take care of the rest.’ God only knows what she means by that. Katherine has become a monster._

_Katherine is right about one thing. Claire does need to be protected, from all that would threaten her, including Katherine._

Claire’s mind reeled in so many directions she couldn’t think straight.

“I’m a doppelganger?” Claire muttered to herself incredulously. Then with awe, “I’m a doppelganger.” Finally, with complete disdain, “I’m _related_ to _Katherine_?”

She was a doppelganger? She was related to Katherine? That made her utterly furious and disgusted in the extreme. She was related to Vincent? That made losing him hurt all the more. What was she a doppelganger for? That she was also related to Elena barely occurred to her in her sadness and revulsion.

If Claire had hated Katherine before, now she hated her with a purity that surpassed even her hate for Alexander. If the bitch hadn’t already been dead, Claire would have gotten up, walked out the door, found her and driven the nearest sharp, pointy piece of wood through her cold self-serving heart with glee. Katherine had ruined everything. Everything. She’d used Claire’s life to hold Vincent hostage to her demands and he couldn’t tell her. Claire seethed but all she could do was keep reading and pray it got better but she knew it would.

With some measure of relief that at least the danger Katherine had hinted at in Klaus was past, she read on. Damon and Stefan had killed him. But it was little comfort.

_New Orleans, March 18, 1911_

_Claire thinks we are here for the pure pleasure of it. I wish that were true. While she is delightedly draining her pick of the revelers on Bourbon Street by moonlight and then sending them away in a blissful compelled haze, I have been sitting in our hotel room, thinking._

_I have not told Claire about Katherine. I never will. The less she knows, the better but I have come to a decision, several decisions actually._

_First, if I am to protect Claire from Katherine, or anyone else (and I have a vague hypothesis on who that I’ll detail in a bit) it means that Claire must be able to protect herself without ever realizing that she can. I do not hesitate to think that Katherine would make good on her threat should I break the word to keep her secrets which she forced from me._

_Katherine is devious, conniving, double dealing, charming and more than a little vicious among other things. She’s incredibly clever and intelligent. If something should happen, if I should at some point, truly die, then Claire must fend for herself. That means Claire has to be at least as skilled as Katherine is at deception._

_It will take time. Years. Maybe decades. But in the journey to make Claire ‘herself’ again, I will, through gentle subterfuge, ensure that she is as capable of all the things Katherine excels at as Katherine is. If I am truly lucky, she’ll be better._

_Katherine isn’t the only one who knows how to play at intrigue and deception. When she introduced me to keeping the histories and stories of our kind and then parlaying that into power and prestige through information selling, I learned more than my fair share about the art. So, I will teach all of it to Claire and do so in such as way that she won’t be aware she knows it until she needs it._

_Katherine has made a silent nemesis of me by threatening Claire. For Claire does desperately remind me of the daughter I lost and I find I am unable to bear the thought that she should ever die because of something I did. I would perish without her. Katherine has unknowingly given me all the skills I need to make Claire into someone who would present a real challenge to her in the future._

_In this way, I will do all I can to protect her without ever endangering her by telling her why. I can’t. The danger the knowledge holds aside, how could I possibly tell her that Katherine, her own ancestor, set a lunatic on her simply to facilitate her own ends? She’s lost enough._

_Second, a vampire named Klaus slaughtered Katherine’s entire family. Elijah, one of the truly old vampires I have had dealings with in the past due to my information selling, was something of a liaison for another just as old…named Klaus. And Elijah was interested in information about Katherine. I know little of them, even Elijah, though he has always acted honorably…but could it be that the Klaus Elijah is linked to, is the same Klaus who killed Katherine’s family? It cannot be a coincidence. Perhaps I can find out more._

_Furthermore, legend has it that a vampire named Klaus of incredible power and viciousness exists and that he is the first, or one of the first of our kind. No one has ever seen him. Elijah is older than written history, the Klaus he serves must be equally as old. Is it possible that his Klaus is the Klaus? Could it be that the legend is not a legend at all?_

_Third, I do not think that Katherine had Alexander Favre turn Claire to ‘spare her life’. I believe she did it as insurance. As a vampire Claire’s doppelganger nature cannot be used for whatever it was meant for but she remains ‘alive’ and thus still available to be used by Katherine if she ever discovers what to do with her. But if the doppelganger must be human, how can Katherine use Claire, now a vampire, to her advantage? There has to be a reason, Katherine does nothing without reason. Well thought out and plotted reason with a million back up plans in case one fails._

_I think Katherine truly does not know why Claire was created but as she said, two doppelganger lines in the same family must mean that they are both connected. Is whatever spell Katherine was created for complementary to the one Claire was created for? If so, why?_

_I think I need to find out before Katherine does. Claire and I shall be going to London where I will try to garner whatever knowledge I can about Svetlana Bulgari from my deceased wife’s family. From there I will take us to Italy and see if I can discover more about the circumstances of Svetlana’s death than Katherine did._

_Also, Dahlia Markova-Taylor was adamant about the family line continuing. Did she know the truth? If she did, how did she know?_

 That Vincent was chronicling his slow discovery of Katherine’s connection to Klaus came as old news to Claire now but the fact that he’d been trying to turn her into a version of Katherine, in order to protect her? That made her despair. Vincent had done the only thing he’d known to do and yet, how could he do that to her? How could he turn her into the very thing he despised? 

_London, May 24 1911_

_It feels strange to be back in London. I haven’t been here in a century. It’s made stranger that I came here to backtrack my own marital family history via Gabriela’s living descendants._

_While Claire happily toured the city by night, and devoured it if I’m any judge, I carefully filtered through all the information I could gather from them under the guise of being a many times removed descendant of myself. It was incredibly hard not to chuckle every time I told someone who ‘I’ was._

_However, I got nowhere. Very little is known about Svetlana other than what Katherine already told me. But, I did confirm Katherine told me the truth about Gabriela’s illegitimate daughter, Helena._

_I admit it has made me a bit maudlin doing all this. Remembering Gabriela and Abigail but having to pretend they are nothing but faces in paintings and books. But now I can look at Claire and see what my Abby might have grown up to be like. I take solace in that at least._

_We are off to Italy._

Claire snorted. Solace. Ha.

_Venice, June 5, 1911_

_Doing all this research without Claire discovering why is becoming taxing. The further she becomes ‘herself’ the more inquisitive she becomes. While it is easy enough to placate her and distract her with all the indulgences the world has to offer she is very perceptive. Perhaps too perceptive for her own good. I fear she will discover my true motivations one day and though they are meant to protect her, I cannot help but think she would be cross if she knew I was being less than honest. She does not take betrayal for any reason lightly and who could blame her after what she has suffered?_

_I am playing a dangerous game molding Claire into a worthy adversary for Katherine while keeping her in the dark at the same time. But I shall keep my secrets and Katherine’s, for Claire’s sake. And selfish as it is, for my own. I could not bear for Claire to hate me._

_I never thought I would say this. Damn Katherine Pierce. I hate her. And damn me for the part I must play because of her._

Damon had been right all along. Alexander had wanted to keep her in a gilded cage. Vincent had kept her in a bower, willfully neglecting to tell her what and who she really was and turning her into an unwitting chess piece in his convoluted game with Katherine. But he had been trying to protect her.

_Venice, June 10 1911_

_Svetlana Bulgari was a bloody cursed secretive woman. For all that she was apparently well known and lauded as a ‘[cortigiana onesta](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cortigiana_onesta&action=edit&redlink=1)’ very little seems to be known of her outside her professional life. _

_Rumor has it that though she had a child (the daughter who bore Gabriela) with one of her many lovers, that she was carrying on an illicit true romance with another man of unknown identity. That aside, the ‘witch’ that killed her was a chambermaid (nominally a slave since if she was a witch one presumes she was a ‘slave’ by choice only) named Lisha whom Svetlana was apparently very friendly with but who was feared among those at court._

_Magic itself was forbidden and if convicted of being a witch one could and would be burned at the stake for the offense but still whispers abounded that Lisha conducted human sacrifice by the light of the moon, that she could set fire to anything with just a thought and that she was the bride of the devil himself._

_Despite that Svetlana (Who apparently cared little for stereotypes or convention, how familiar!) and Lisha became friends and Svetlana doted on Lisha’s children despite having given up her own to maintain her status, but Lisha disapproved of the man Svetlana was in love with which led to strife in their friendship. Then, quite suddenly, with no apparent explanation, Lisha turned on Svetlana._

_The two of them were found as Katherine described one morning in the fallow vineyards near the court not long after that. Of course nothing is known of the vampire who killed Lisha, it was assumed that animals did it or perhaps her own evil magic wrought something that killed her. Nor does anyone know why Lisha killed Svetlana in what all thought must have been a black magic sacrifice._

_So I have gotten nothing more than Katherine did. However, black magic or not (uneducated humans wouldn’t know one type of magic from another) it seems there was magic involved. I know there was a vampire involved but not who or why. So I am left where I started._

_Something Katherine did not tell me was that Svetlana’s body was taken shortly after it was discovered. Lisha’s was not. I do not know what that means and if she were killed in a magic sacrifice she certainly didn’t live. Perhaps the unknown lover claimed her body and buried it properly? Or the vampire who killed Lisha took it? Could they be one and the same? Worse though it seems very doubtful, did the vampire involved possibly turn Svetlana? Is she still out there somewhere? I seriously doubt it but it is something to take note of._

_However, I may have something Katherine, focused as she is on her own safety and lineage, did not think of. Lisha had children and witches, real ones, are born not learned. They flow in lineages just as doppelgangers do and the child of a witch is a witch whether they know what they are or not. Witches also keep grimoires. Each spell a witch does is unique to that witch and so they keep records of them in case it should ever need to be duplicated or undone. These too are passed down through families or to other witches should there be no family to pass it to.  If I can trace Lisha’s family tree, perhaps I can discover what spell it was Lisha did and why._

_The search will be a difficult one. With no surname to go on and the spotty records kept for slaves at the best of times, it will be very difficult to trace Lisha’s children._

Was Svetlana still alive somewhere since her body had never been recovered.? Turned as Vincent suggested? Had Vincent ever found Lisha’s descendants? Who was the vampire who had killed the witch? And what damn spell had been done that resulted in Claire even being born?

_Chicago, July 28, 1927_

_Claire, Michael and I have moved to Chicago. What was meant to be the last stepping-stone in a seventeen-year long struggle to return Claire to herself has become the precipice of her possible destruction._

_Elijah turned up at my door again. It’s not that he hasn’t on occasion throughout the years, looking for information on one thing or another but this time he came asking about Katherine again. Why I don’t know. No one has any reason to believe that Katherine Pierce is still alive but what is believed and what matters are two different things._

_Elijah says that Damon and Stefan Salvatore are in Chicago. The two men Katherine is known to have dallied with, some say she even loved, while she was in Mystic Falls before her ‘death’ in 1864. She also turned both of them._

_Of course, I knew of them already but I was not aware they were in Chicago before we were. Had I, I might have avoided Chicago altogether. Damon Salvatore is a notorious cad and relishes what he is with all the pomp and circumstance that goes with it despite his tragic past. But Stefan is a Ripper. A monster, who has no humanity and no conscience. They call him ‘The Ripper of Monterey’. He slaughtered an entire migrant village in a night with no remorse or care for being discovered._

_But now Elijah wishes to know what they know. Specifically he wants to know concretely that Katherine is dead._

_I can’t say no. He’ll suspect something and I dare not tell him what I already know. Katherine’s not dead, she’s very much alive and a thorn in my side. So I must make a go of it. If it becomes apparent that they too know Katherine is still alive, I shall have to lie and hope Elijah doesn’t discover my deception. Retribution for that would most certainly end in death for both me and Claire._

_Because I now know that Elijah and the Klaus he is in the service of is most certainly the same Klaus who slaughtered Katherine’s family. While Elijah will not tell me why, he did confirm that they hunted for her for some transgression against Klaus for centuries with no success until her apparent demise in Mystic Falls. Klaus wants confirmation the woman he spent four hundred years tracking is truly gone. What I do not know and Elijah laughed off as a ‘vampire bedtime story’ is whether or not his Klaus is the same Klaus of legend. It’s not important enough to pursue at the moment I have more pressing matters._

_To further complicate things, Katherine showed up not a day later to reiterate her threat that if I tell Elijah anything that she will kill Claire. Apparently, she was in town too knowing that Elijah was looking for information about her. She insists that I go through with Elijah’s request and then deny discovering anything. Damon and Stefan Salvatore think she’s dead anyway so it will work out perfectly, she says._

_I wish I dared to cram everything she says down her throat and then rip her head from her shoulders. But she’s stronger than I am. She’d kill me before I had the chance._

_What am I to do? I can’t not do it and I can’t tell Elijah anything. I dare not tell Elijah the truth in an effort to free myself of the manipulative woman. For if I do, and Katherine is right about Klaus and Elijah wanting Claire as badly as her if they knew the truth, Katherine would certainly tell them about Claire before they killed her. And them I can never hope to defeat._

_I’m caught between the devil and the deep blue sea._

_I will have to go through with it but I don’t think either Salvatore would be inclined to talk to a gentleman like me about Katherine. But, I have taught Claire much, though she doesn’t know it, and she has a way with people that has them doing her bidding without ever compelling them. She can wrap a man around her fingers before he knows what she has done and she’s so innocently naïve about it. She knows not what she does and a man is far more likely to say things to a woman in bed than he is to a fellow at any time._

_I think it is time I tested out what I have taught Claire. On Damon, not on Stefan. He’s far too much of a monster to even think about doing it with. Besides, perhaps while Claire is clandestinely and unknowingly saving her own life she will find a kindred spirit in Damon Salvatore. Their histories are quite alike and he’s as unconventional as she is. I think it will be good for her. She could use a friend however temporary it might be._

_To my complete revulsion, Katherine agrees that Claire would be a perfect information sieve. Damon was apparently completely besotted with her and if he fell for one Petrova, he’ll certainly fall for another, she claims. She’s very much against setting Claire up with Stefan. I think she might have actually been jealous of the notion though I’d never consider it in the first place. Did she actually care for Stefan Salvatore? Perhaps somewhere buried under the bitch that is Katherine Pierce, there’s a shadow of the woman I met so long ago._

_To top it all off, Elijah added incentive to his request for information. Daylight rings. For both of us. I haven’t asked him about them before because it is so important to me that Claire be safe and the less she can wander about the safer she is much as it pains me to deny her the one thing she misses so terribly, the sun. But neither have I ever held in the palm of my hand information worth something as valuable to a vampire as daylight rings. And I cannot use it. The irony._

_Have I mentioned how much I revile Katherine Pierce?_

_However, if my Claire cannot walk in the sun, neither shall I. And I shall never tell her that I could have given her all she wanted but didn’t._

_Have I mentioned how much I revile myself?_

_I will have to be content with the knowledge that Claire’s lineage has remained the best kept secret of my entire life and will remain so until the day I die._

Claire felt sick. Vincent had been caught between two impossible choices. He’d found a way out of it the only way he could but he’d used her to do. She hated him and loved him in equal measure. Just as she and Damon had thought, she had never been meant to fall in love with him. She wasn’t sure what hurt more. That he’d loved her so much he’d been willing to do anything, even hurt her, to protect her. Or that he had been so desperate that he had used her as a weapon at Katherine’s suggestion.

_Chicago, June 14, 1928_

_She’s in love with him._

_God help me, Claire is in love with Damon Salvatore._

_Worse, he’s in love with her. Genuinely in love with her._

_This wasn’t supposed to happen._

_It’s been nearly a year since I idly suggested Claire and I spend a carefree night at ‘The Red Ivy’ where I knew Damon spent many a night.  A year since the two of them ‘accidently’ met through my own conniving deception. A year since they started this tryst of theirs that was never supposed to be more than an idle fling to gain information Claire didn’t know she was gaining. A year that has gained me none of the ‘knowledge’ to confirm Katherine’s ‘death’ but has insinuated Damon Salvatore inextricably into our lives._

_In this past year I have learned absolutely nothing first or second hand via Claire about Katherine’s death from Damon. He never speaks of her; it is as if she never existed. And yet, in the time I have spent waiting for him to say something, anything, about the devious wench that turned him and broke his heart Claire has fallen madly in love with him, and stupid as it is when I went into this with the intent to deceive, I’ve grown to like the man, even call him a friend._

_And he has managed to do the one thing I never could. For all I’ve taught her, for all I’ve coddled her, protected her, groomed her to be both the vampire she was meant to be and the adversary she needs to be for Katherine I could never quite get Claire to be ‘touchable’. There has always remained something in her that refused to allow others near it. She’s fierce and wild, untamed in the way a tiger is but she was never ‘touchable’. Damon changed that. He changed her. And with that change the last piece that was missing in her fell into place. Damon set her free._

_For that alone I’d like him, nay I’d love him, as a man loves his son or his best friend. I do._

_How did this happen? Now what do I do?_

_We could go on as we have. Damon need never know about my deceit and neither need Claire. All I have to do is tell Elijah the truth, Damon has never revealed anything that either confirms or denies Katherine’s alleged death in Mystic Falls.  That’s easy right? Or will Elijah be displeased that I have gained nothing at all to give him?_

_And what of Katherine? What will she think when she discovers that Damon’s in love with her descendant as much as he ever was with her? Will it please her? Anger her? Katherine is strange that way. While Damon was nothing more than a plaything for her and Stefan her real target, she has a jealous streak that’s profound. What is hers is hers, forever more. It was her suggestion though. Could it be that she felt guilty for her deception of him? Could it be she meant for Claire to replace her in his affections? Did Katherine Pierce show just a touch of humanity and remorse in the guise of trickery? Or does she not care either way as long as her secrets are kept?_

_What do I do?_

Claire gripped the journal fiercely, her hands twisting it between them until the leather groaned and the spine threatened to snap. All of it had been lies. She could hear Vincent’s despair oozing from the pages as his carefully laid plan backfired royally. He had betrayed her. Of that there was no question. But he’d had a good reason, they were inextricably tangled in Katherine’s web and there had been no escape. She didn’t know if she hurt more for Vincent or herself.

_Chicago, June 21, 1928_

_The world is coming down around me._

_Katherine assured me Alexander Favre was no threat. That she had made certain that he would never follow after Claire, that he would never attempt to retrieve her. She was wrong._

_Michael, is dead. My beloved Michael. He killed him. A decade together and he’s just gone. I should have turned him. But he never wanted it and I wouldn’t force the issue. Now I wish I had. I should have turned him!_

_This is my fault. If I hadn’t insisted Claire had to sing again to complete her ‘self improvement’, to get her past her past… perhaps Alexander would never have found us. I never should have encouraged her to sing again. Her voice is too unique, too rare. Of course, he heard about her and followed. But I did and it’s done and I cannot undo it. What have I done?_

_Alexander is a madman. He’s completely utterly insane. And he will stop at nothing to get Claire back. He’s been stalking us this entire year. How did he manage to do it without our knowledge, without us noticing? How is it he managed to turn every human we know into his secret army of spies and us not notice?_

_He wishes to kill me and Damon and take Claire. He’s older than any of us and more powerful. I know not what to do. Do I ever know what to do anymore?_

_Do I tell Elijah? He’d certainly be able to kill Alexander without blinking. But then I might have to tell him why Alexander is after us. No, that won’t work._

_Do I, I can’t believe I’m saying this, tell Katherine and enlist her aid? No, I can’t. She’s already fled the city to avoid Elijah and Alexander, conniving as Katherine is, is older than her as well._

_We will have to do this on our own._

_The three of us could take him, together I think. If we are lucky. But I will not allow Claire to endanger herself to do it. Neither will Damon. We’ve made a plan. It just might work. Of anything it has the most likelihood of succeeding._

_God I hope it works._

He wrote like a man at the end of his rope, one that was quickly unraveling and he had said nothing. “Why didn’t you just tell me,” Claire muttered.

_Chicago, August 1, 1928_

_Alexander is dead. Damon is gone. He fled in the aftermath of Alexander’s demise and left Claire in a state from which I do not know how to save her. Why did he leave? I know he loved her._

_He deceived us all in order to keep all but himself out of harm’s way. Risked his own life to save Claire’s and mine. Why did he leave? If it were not for Claire’s adamant insistence that I leave it be I’d hunt him down and kill him. But Claire…._

_She’s broken, slipping, raging. Damon’s departure has destroyed all I spent so many years trying to repair. He’s undone anything good about her. I fear she will flip her humanity switch to be rid of her heartbreak. Damn Damon Salvatore all to hell. I never should have allowed Katherine to manipulate me this way. But what else could I do? Claire is more important to me than blood or breathe._

_Damn Damon. Damn Katherine. Damn me._

_Elijah came to collect. He wasn’t happy that I could give him nothing in regard to confirming Katherine’s death but he was not angry. He believed me. Thank god._

_But word travels among vampires and when they are in the same city it travels quickly. He was angry that I didn’t come to him about Alexander. He knew about the fight at the brewery but doesn’t know why and I have no intention of enlightening him. However, he almost seemed hurt that I didn’t seek his aid in ridding us of Alexander’s madness._

_Elijah actually believes I’m his friend. Would that he knew what I’ve kept from him all this time. He wouldn’t think so then. But I too think of Elijah as a friend. He’s honorable and moral in his own way._

_And while the day light rings are off the table since I didn’t get what Elijah needed from Damon, he offered what help he could when I confessed my concerns about Claire. He’s seen her. Seen what a mess she is. I swear he was sad for her and regretted that his search for information resulted in such tragic circumstances. He suggests that I take her away somewhere, somewhere new and where there is nothing to remind Claire of Damon. He suggests that we start over.  Perhaps he is right._

_When I asked him why he offered any help at all he said, ‘Perhaps I loved a girl like her once. Perhaps I still do. Perhaps I know what it is to be heartbroken.  That kind of love never dies.’_

_Katherine hasn’t returned. I have no idea where she is. I don’t care either. If she stays gone forever it won’t be long enough. But she’ll turn up again. She always does. I kept her secrets and Claire’s. I will continue to. But if I ever see Katherine Pierce again I’ll kill her, so help me God._

_This all started with her._

Elijah had been the one to suggest Vincent spirit Claire away to Europe? That came as a mild shock. Why would he care? And who had he loved and apparently lost, that had made him certain that the only balm for Claire’s broken heart had been a new beginning?

_Columbus Georgia, April 10, 1937_

_Claire and I have returned to America ahead of schedule. Her parents have both passed, her father in 1935 and her mother in 1936. Claire wanted to be certain that they had been buried properly. What fools they were to reject their own daughter for what she could not control and how profoundly sad that despite their betrayal Claire still cares about them. Fools both of them. But I’m no better._

_She’s only just gotten over Damon. ‘Gotten over’. I don’t think she will ever be ‘over him’ but she’s moved on. Though she is not who she was. There’s a sadness in her now that never goes away. It’s the place in her heart that is empty without Damon. And now this._

_Claire went home for the first time in thirty years and it’s as if she never existed. There are no pictures of her, no record that she was even born. No one knows who she was and what of her father’s family is left and inherited the house literally cannot say her name. It’s hurt her deeply._

_She believes that her parents excommunicated her from their lives altogether, that they were so ashamed of her that they erased her from their lives utterly. But I know the truth._

_It wasn’t them. It was Katherine. She said she would ‘take care of the rest’ if I kept the secret of Claire’s lineage and her own secrets. She did. She compelled all of them to forget Claire, destroyed all record she ever existed in order to hide who Claire is. No one else could have done it nor would they have wanted to. It was Katherine._

_I can’t tell Claire this. How do I tell her that the evil bitch vampire who got her turned by a madman has destroyed everything she held dear? To the point of erasing the knowledge of her very existence?_

_Why did Katherine not just kill them? That would have been far easier than compelling them. Did she have some twisted notion that compelling them to forget Claire would be less painful to Claire than simply killing them? Did she do the same to anyone in Mystic Falls who might have remembered Claire’s family? She must have. Katherine is very thorough. I’m not sure I want to know. Not anymore._

_Once again, I am charged with repairing the damage Katherine has wrought on our lives despite not having seen or heard from her in a decade. Will Katherine always haunt us?_

Claire growled low in her throat as she read. Katherine. The name had become an epithet. Katherine had been the one to erase her from her family’s memory. They hadn’t forgotten her in disgrace. They’d been made to forget. But would they have counted it a blessing or a curse if they’d had the choice? Was there no event in her life Katherine hadn’t orchestrated like some perverse puppet master?

_Memphis, Tennessee October 12, 1942_

_Klaus is real. This explains everything about Katherine. Doesn’t mean I won’t kill her if I ever see her again but it explains it. I can’t even begin to detail it all in this one paltry entry and have done so in a separate journal devoted solely to it but suffice it to say I don’t blame her for running.  Klaus slaughtered her whole family, her mother, her father, her sister and meant to kill Katherine._

_Katherine was meant to be the key (read sacrifice) in a spell to break the curse that binds vampires to the night and werewolves to the cycle of the moon. The Sun and Moon Curse. Werewolves are real? I can’t even begin to process all this._

_And Klaus? Is Elijah’s brother! There’s not one, not two Original vampires, there’s an entire family of them! Five of them to be exact. Though no one knows where they are they exist. I need a drink. Many drinks._

_If that was Katherine’s purpose as a doppelganger, what could Claire’s have possibly been? Has Katherine’s doppelganger been born yet? There was only about three hundred years between Svetlana and Claire. How long between Katherine and hers? Oh god, they can never find out about Claire. No one. Ever._

_I’ve let things lie with Claire’s lineage and Lisha’s involvement in her creation as a doppelganger due to other concerns but I can’t anymore. I have to find out what Claire was created for. Before someone else does. I pray Katherine hasn’t already beat me to it._

Elijah was Klaus’s brother? There were more of them? Did this twisted story never end? Claire spared a vicious spark of anger that Klaus hadn’t succeeded in killing Katherine sooner.

_Boston, Massachusetts September 5, 1968_

_Claire has proven an invaluable resource to me in my research. Of course, I never allow her to help me with my lies and information seeking when it would reveal to her all that I’ve kept secret but sometimes one needs information to trade for information and in that she’s priceless. All I’ve taught her has come into full bloom. She’s magnificent.  Scarily so._

_She does it in such a way that no one ever suspects her. She can pick apart someone’s head without them ever knowing and God help anyone who crosses her. She took to it like a duck to water. To be frank it terrifies me what she’s capable of. But she is what I made her._

_I’ve made her everything she’d ever need to be to protect herself from Katherine. To beat the villain you have to be the better villain. Only Claire’s humanity keeps her from being worse than Katherine ever was. It is that, that tempers her actions always._

_Where Katherine will do anything it takes, Claire has a sense of morality (though she hides it well) that gives her a grounding that Katherine does not have. She never lost her desire to be accepted by humans though she denies it and no longer pursues it as she once did. Never lost her capacity to love for she still loves Damon, she loves me. She hasn’t, despite all she’s suffered, lost what makes her who she is. Even if she thinks she has._

_They say that love is a vampire’s greatest weakness. I disagree. It’s Claire’s greatest strength. Claire’s weakness is her fiery temper, which I have never been able to teach her to control. If anything is ever her undoing it will be that._

_That being said she’s dangerous now. More dangerous than I ever imagined._

_Katherine is going to be so surprised one day. God forgive me._

And so, the teacher mourned his student surpassing his expectations. She’d become all Vincent had wanted and all for naught. Katherine was dead. Claire would never meet Katherine on the playing field as he had feared. But her anger came to a screeching halt on the next entry.

Dated only five days before they had been abducted by Alexander it confirmed everything she, Elena and the Salvatore’s had speculated about.

_Los Angeles, California, March 15 2010_

_It’s taken a century but I did it. I found one of the witch Lisha’s descendants. Stacey Hart in Miami Florida. Perhaps she has the answers I need about Claire. I hope so._

Katherine must have discovered Vincent had a concrete lead and sent Alexander to finish what he had started.

Claire sat looking at the last page in stupefied shock. “Oh my God.”


End file.
